NATO jets patrolled Estonia-Russia border last week

LRT reported, citing Lithuania’s Ministry of National Defence, that NATO air-policing fighters in the Baltic states were scrambled once to patrol near a border and once to identify and escort Russian aircraft that had violated flight rules.

On Friday, NATO air-policing fighters flew to identify an unmanned aircraft in Latvian territory. The drone was destroyed. The Alliance’s fighters also patrolled near the Estonian-Russian border that day.

ELTA noted that NATO has conducted air-policing missions in the Baltic states since March 2004, when Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia joined the Alliance. Since then, military personnel from Belgium, Denmark, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, Spain, the United States, Poland, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal, France, Romania, Turkey, Hungary, Germany and Italy have patrolled Baltic airspace.