Romania and Latvia, both NATO members and supporters of Ukraine in its 2 1/2-year-old war with Russia, on Sunday were investigating instances of Russian drones that crashed after breaching their airspace, authorities in both countries said.
The incidents prompted officials to call for measures to act jointly to counter Russia air incursions.
NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana denounced the incidents as “irresponsible and potentially dangerous”, while saying there was no indication of a deliberate attack on Alliance member-states.
The Romanian defence ministry said the “radar supervision system identified and tracked the path of a drone which entered national airspace and then exited towards Ukraine”.
[…]
In Latvia, which borders both Russia and its close ally Belarus, President Edgars Rinkevics posted on social media platform X that his government sought a common NATO response.
“The number of such incidents is increasing along the Eastern flank of NATO and we must address them collectively,” Rinkevics wrote.
[…]
“There weren’t serious issues on the ground,” Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu told reporters on Sunday after consulting with the defence minister.
“(Attacks) will continue. That is it, we have a war on the border.”
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Why don’t they shoot them the fuck down?
One reason may be that in Romania there is a law that prohibits shooting down drones in peacetime, but they’re gonna change that it seems:
Romanian lawmakers plan to consider legislation at their current session on enabling Romania to shoot down drones invading the country’s airspace in peacetime.
Because it is a “hot button issue” - you basically need to do it over Ukraine, and a lot of countries that don’t border Ukraine don’t like that. Also, it’s mostly pointless, they’ll go on flying and crash into an open field. They’ll probably get shot down if they go towards a city or something.
Latvia is not even close to Ukraine.
Yeah no shit
It’s only a hot button issue because people are still irrationally scared of Russia. They always do stupid shit like that to test out boundaries. If you show them clearly that you won’t take their shit, they pull back.
Cool, but it is still a hot button issue. People are scared of war and that is normal - hence why appeasement always preceeds it. The ironic part is, it doesn’t work, and the only thing that does is to be a dick back
I guess this means war 🤷
Is incompetence a valid casus belli? As Belarus having to shoot down drones on a regular basis shows, the Russian armed forces can’t aim half of their drones in any meaningful way.
There are a lot of different options to escalate, without starting a full scale war. Giving Ukraine certain weapons is an option. Long range missiles and warships come to mind. Latvia could for example produce long range drones for Ukraine.
