Armed escorts in masks pushed a group of migrants from Belarus toward Latvia and threatened Latvian soldiers, and hours later masked people crossed into Latvia and stole border surveillance cameras, Latvian Interior Minister Jānis Dombrava said on 6 October. Latvia's military described the incident as part of a continuing hybrid campaign on the border, and Ukraine's foreign minister blamed Moscow.

Russia keeps probing the EU's eastern defenses with migrants pushed from its own soil and through its ally Belarus, alongside drone incursions and sabotage that ISW has linked into one Russian pattern across Europe.

Armed escorts threatened Latvian soldiers

Latvian soldiers stopped at least 20 migrants trying to cross the border illegally from Belarus, the Latvian National Armed Forces said. Masked escorts led the group, and this time they were armed, threatened the soldiers, and urged and drove the migrants toward Latvia, the military said.

"Unlike many previous incidents, this time the provocation was particularly demonstrative and aggressive," Dombrava said.

The incident confirms that deliberate provocations and hybrid threats on the border will continue, the armed forces said. Illegal migration is being used as a tool to pressure Latvia's border and, with it, the external border of the EU and NATO, they added.

Belarus began funneling migrants toward the EU in 2021, a campaign Poland's government called a hybrid attack in which the migrants end up as weapons. In 2023, Finland closed its border crossings with Russia, accusing Moscow of the same tactic, and by mid-July Latvia had logged 111 straight days of migrants pushed across from Belarus.

Masked people stole the cameras

Several hours after the standoff, people in masks entered Latvian territory, damaged a distribution cabinet, and stole surveillance cameras, Dombrava said. They returned to Belarus before the border guard patrol could arrive.

"Belarus should understand that such incidents could lead to more serious consequences for Belarus itself," he said.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Ukraine stands in full solidarity with Latvia. "Make no mistake: Moscow is behind it," he wrote, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin "deliberately weaponizes migration, with the help of Lukashenka, to destabilise Europe."

Tunnels, tear gas, and damaged cameras on the border

Latvia's border guards stopped 11,384 attempts to cross illegally from Belarus between the start of 2026 and 24 September. In January, Latvia's armed forces and border guard published evidence that Belarusian security agencies were organizing illegal migration across the border. Latvia has also recorded deliberate damage to cables, distribution cabinets, and camera poles on its eastern border, aimed at slowing the rollout of an automated border control system.

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On 22 July, Latvian soldiers fired warning shots and used tear gas against migrants trying to cross. The next day, Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs said Russia and Belarus were stepping up their hybrid war against the Baltic States to distract from Russia's failures in Ukraine. Latvia temporarily halted crossings on the Belarus border on 31 July. In August, Latvian guards found the first tunnel dug from Belarus and turned back 15 migrants who used it.

Lithuania is getting its US troops back although the overall American presence in Europe will shrink, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda said. He tied the wider drawdown to Washington's demand that Europe take more responsibility for its own defense. Lithuania's case, he suggested, is the exception.

While waging all-out war on Ukraine, Russia keeps probing Europe with drones and sabotage that stop just short of open attack. Its small Baltic neighbors are already preparing their people for a possible invasion, and American soldiers on their soil have long been the clearest sign that attacking them means fighting the US. With Washington weighing a pullback and telling Europe to fend for itself, each US unit that stays on Russia's doorstep carries more weight than its size.

"There will be fewer US troops in Europe"

Nausėda spoke in an interview with LNK television on 28 September.

"There will be fewer US troops in Europe. This is partly related to what US President Donald Trump says, to the signals the US administration is sending us that Europe must take on more responsibility itself," he said.

Europe must do more for itself, and it is already doing so, Nausėda added. The US presence in Lithuania matters not only for its military power but also for deterrence, he argued.

"The presence of these troops is precisely what reduces the likelihood of military conflict or military aggression," he told LNK, ELTA reported.

"The heavy battalion will be here"

Nausėda called the decision a kind of encouragement for Lithuania. "As the overall number of US troops in Europe decreases, in Lithuania that number will at least remain, will not decrease, and perhaps will even be slightly larger," he said. "In any case, the heavy battalion will be here."

The battalion will keep its Abrams tanks, but an engineer battalion will replace the artillery battalion, Nausėda said on LRT's Savaitė program. The rotation will again last nine months. The Americans will number roughly as before, over 1,000, Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said.

Estonia has also secured the return of US troops, at least temporarily, LRT noted.

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More than 1,000 US troops began leaving Lithuania when their rotation ended in early June, and no replacement arrived, LRT said. It was the country's first gap in the US presence since 2020. American heavy battalions have rotated through Lithuania since 2019.

The Pentagon is weighing a withdrawal of about 25,000 US troops from Europe, and possibly as many as 40,000, NBC News reported, adding that no final decision had been made. About 80,000 US troops are now stationed on the continent. Germany, Italy, and Spain would likely be among the countries most affected.

Russian drones have entered Moldovan airspace 39 times since the start of 2026, against 17 in all of last year, President Maia Sandu said after a meeting of the country's National Security Council, Liga reported. Moldova's military can defend individual sites and little more, and Sandu said the country has to speed up building air defenses it spent three decades without. The council also ordered better protection for the energy facilities the country runs on, drones included.

What Moldova has to shoot with

Moldovan forces hold portable anti-aircraft missiles, anti-aircraft machine guns, and electronic warfare equipment, Sandu said. Their capabilities are mostly limited to protecting individual pieces of critical infrastructure. Three decades of ignoring air defense will not be paid off in five, she said, and Moldova is working with partners to speed the process up.

The military is now working to extend the range its air defenses cover. Moldova received €120 million from the EU to buy a medium-range system, and it is looking with international partners for more modern and cheaper ways to bring drones down.

Chișinău is also deepening cooperation with countries in the region to receive and pass on threat data faster. Interception is the part Moldova cannot yet do: Romania has shot down drones that reached it after crossing Moldovan territory, while Moldova mostly records them.

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A month of incidents

The pace has picked up this month. A drone tracked over Moldova on 8 September held up seven flights, among them Volodymyr Zelenskyy's plane as it took off for King Harald V's funeral in Norway.

Three days later, Moldova temporarily withdrew its staff from three border crossings on Ukrainian territory because of the threat of Russian strikes, after Russia hit at least five of Ukraine's western crossings since late August.

On the morning of 18 September, a loud explosion went off near Chișinău and police found drone wreckage at the site. In August, a blast near the village of Talmaza marked the country's third airspace breach in nine days.

Warning the public is the other gap

Moldova is still building the system that would tell people a drone is overhead. MD-Alert needs more time to implement and is costed at €5 million, Sandu said, and until it works the government will use whatever notification mechanisms it already has.

The council that produced the drone count was convened on energy, and its decisions ran from gas reserves and fuel stocks to cyber vulnerabilities. Among them, Sandu wrote, were measures to better protect the facilities the country's energy supply depends on from hostile action, including the danger of drones.