NATO downs drone over Lithuania; Russian warship fires flares at Danish helicopter

Lithuania's air defences destroyed a drone that entered its airspace from neighbouring Belarus shortly after midnight on Tuesday, in what is believed to be the first time a NATO jet has shot down a drone over Lithuanian territory. President Gitanas Nausėda confirmed the destruction of the drone, which crashed near the village of Pratkūnai close to the Kruonis Pumped Storage Plant. Italian pilots flying under NATO's air-policing mission scrambled from Šiauliai air base to intercept it, and Lithuania's defence ministry reported that an explosive device was found and neutralised at the crash site. The incident followed an unidentified object crossing Lithuanian airspace from Belarus into Russia's Kaliningrad exclave two days earlier.

On the same day, Denmark reported that a Russian Navy frigate operating in international waters off the country's southern coast fired two emergency flares at a Danish air force helicopter conducting a routine photographic operation. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen condemned what she called "reckless action from Russia towards Denmark's military," vowing that intimidation attempts "will not succeed."

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated that the Lithuanian and Danish incidents were not isolated events but "part of a broader pattern of Russian aggression and provocation against Europe testing our readiness and our resolve." Poland also scrambled fighter jets over reported Russian drone activity, a day after retrieving a suspected Russian drone from its territorial waters, while German authorities searched for debris from a drone that reportedly crashed near a Bundeswehr airbase in Wunstorf.