AIBRIEF
NATO's Baltic Air Policing mission logged its first public drone intercept overnight, with Italian and Turkish jets scrambling to down a UAV Latvia's military blames on Russian jamming.
NATO jets shot down a drone in Latvian airspace overnight, near the village of Rugāji in the northeast, close to the Russian border. Italian Eurofighters scrambled from Lithuania and Turkish F-16s from Estonia engaged the uncrewed aerial vehicle, according to Latvia's National Armed Forces.
It is the first public drone intercept under NATO's Baltic Air Policing mission, a standing multi-nation tripwire built around manned aircraft. Latvia's armed forces said the drone entered its airspace as a result of Russian electromagnetic warfare, military jargon for jamming or signal warfare. If that account holds, the mechanism can put a drone across a NATO border without anyone launching it there.
The "Russian electromagnetic warfare" characterization is Latvia's own framing, not an independent finding. Drone type, launch origin, and operator attribution are not yet verified by a separate source, and no primary NATO statement has been published on the engagement.
Earlier the same Friday, more than 50 Ukrainian drones struck targets in Russia's western regions, including the Leningrad and Tver areas, hitting the port of Ust-Luga and a Wildberries warehouse. The two events unfolded in the same operational day; the source does not establish a link.