NATO has upgraded its two-decade-old Baltic air policing mission into air defense, giving pilots a wider mandate that includes destroying "objects that pose a threat," Reuters reported. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda announced the decision, taken at the alliance summit in Ankara. The change ends a peacetime-only format that dates to 2004.

From escort duty to shoot-down authority

The air policing mission over Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia began in 2004, immediately after the three states joined NATO. None of them operates its own fighter jets, so allied aircraft identify and escort Russian military planes flying near their borders.

"(The current) air policing mission is meant for peacetime, when fighters react to incidents by escorting. This way, we show that we take note of the incidents. It's a kind of deterrence," Nausėda told reporters in Ankara. "But what is happening today is not a totally peaceful environment."

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna wrote on X that the upgraded mission will have "greater flexibility and faster response to air threats."

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First shots came this year

NATO jets opened fire under the mission for the first time this year, downing suspected stray Ukrainian drones over Estonia in May and over Latvia in June. A Romanian F-16 carried out the first shootdown over Estonia's Lake Võrtsjärv; French jets downed the Latvian intruder three weeks later.

The drones were Ukrainian aircraft aimed at military targets inside Russia but either strayed off course or were diverted by Russian electronic warfare. Kyiv and Baltic governments assess that Moscow redirects them into NATO airspace deliberately. The wave of incursions this spring forced airport closures, triggered repeated air alerts, and brought down Latvia's government.

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A mission that kept growing

The jets currently scramble to meet every Russian military plane flying over international waters adjacent to the Baltic states, from Russia's Kaliningrad exclave into the Gulf of Finland. NATO expanded the mission in 2014, after Russia seized Crimea. It now includes over a dozen fighters from up to three rotating allies, flying from two regional airfields.

The escort format's limits showed last year, when the jets took off in response to a Russian Su-35 escorting a shadow fleet tanker after Estonia tried to detain the vessel. They did not engage the fighter.

Russia has again accused the Baltic states of enabling Ukrainian drone attacks on its territory, this time claiming to hold "verified data," the Moscow Times reported. The accusation came right after Ukrainian drones struck Russian port infrastructure on the Baltic coast. It repeats a pattern of evidence-free Russian claims against NATO's eastern members that Western officials and analysts read as escalation groundwork.

"Verified data" that no one has seen

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin claimed that Riga and other capitals of the region open "air corridors" for drones attacking Russia. 

"Let us remind you that we have verified data that Latvia and other Baltic republics have already provided their air corridors for Ukrainian drones that attacked our country's civilian infrastructure," he stated to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. 

He presented no evidence — Russia never does when it levels such accusations.

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The strikes behind the timing

Ukrainian drones hit the St. Petersburg oil terminal, the Vysotsk port, and Kronstadt overnight on 4 July. Several fires broke out at the terminal, which handles 12.5 million tons of petroleum products a year. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine's forces struck the port infrastructure with which the Kremlin "earns money for the Russian war." In Kronstadt, he noted, the target was military. The raid extended Ukraine's campaign against Russia's Baltic oil export gateway.

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A recycled accusation

Russia's Defense Ministry made the same charge in May, claiming that a group of six Ukrainian-made Lutyi drones crossed Latvian airspace in an attempted "terrorist attack on civilian infrastructure objects" near St. Petersburg. Riga denied it, and Russia's UN envoy then threatened Latvia with retaliation, drawing condemnation from Washington and Brussels.

Before that, in April, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova and Maritime Board chief Nikolai Patrushev claimed the Baltic states and Finland lend their airspace to Ukrainian drones. Patrushev asserted this served strikes on Russia's "non-military maritime infrastructure and merchant fleet," naming the Primorsk and Ust-Luga ports in Leningrad Oblast.

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Threats as a pattern

The recycled accusations fit a run of consistent Russian threats against the EU and the Baltic states. Institute for the Study of War analysts assessed in May that Moscow was manufacturing pretexts for aggression against the Baltics. Days before the latest claim, Russia shut seven rail crossings on its borders with Latvia, Estonia, and Finland without explanation, after reports it was preparing a "provocation" against the Baltic states or Poland.

American troops have largely left Estonia after the Pentagon paused new deployments to Europe and launched a review of its global force posture, according to Estonian public broadcaster ERR. Only a small part of the agreed contingent — mostly support personnel — remains in the NATO border state. A senior Estonian lawmaker says Washington's decision on its forces in Europe could come within months.

A contingent below its agreed floor

Under the current defense cooperation agreement between Estonia and the US, an American contingent of 500 to 700 troops should be stationed in the country. Only a small portion of that personnel remains, mostly service and support units, ERR reported.

Kalev Stoicescu, head of the Riigikogu's national defense committee from the Eesti 200 party, said the situation amounts to a paused rotation inside a wider review of the US presence in Europe. 

"They began the rotation, but its implementation is suspended until a final decision on the presence of US armed forces in Europe. That decision could be made within six months," he said.

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A summer rotation with no return date

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said:

"The Americans traditionally rotate in summer. That process is underway now, but because of the force structure review, we don't yet know how many troops and which units will arrive."

Estonian politicians read the pause as Washington seeking to shift more of NATO's security burden onto European members. The UK and French contingents remain in Estonia and keep their planned rotations.

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A pattern along the Baltic frontier

Estonia is the second Baltic state to face a US rotation gap in weeks. More than 1,000 US troops with Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles began leaving Lithuania in June with no confirmed replacement, the first such gap since 2020. The Pentagon's review is already pulling thousands of troops from Germany and Poland, and US officials have told Baltic and Nordic allies that some contracted weapons deliveries will be delayed.

The drawdown lands against a chorus of European intelligence warnings that Russia could be ready to test NATO within years of the fighting in Ukraine slowing, with most alliance defense chiefs pointing to a window around 2029 — while Europe's own rearmament plans mature only by 2030.

Latvia's state police will begin checking the documents of everyone who visits Russia's embassy in Riga starting Wednesday, Foreign Minister Baiba Braže announced. She described the measure as a direct answer to how Russian security services treat visitors to foreign diplomatic missions in Moscow. The Russian embassy has already been informed of the new procedure.

Reciprocity at the embassy door

The rule takes effect on 1 July and applies to all visitors to the mission. Braže said it responds to Russian actions in Moscow, where the authorities screen the documents of people entering foreign diplomatic buildings.

The step gives Russia the same treatment it imposes on others, applied at its own embassy in the Latvian capital.

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More restrictions in the pipeline

Latvia is weighing further pressure on Russia and Belarus alongside the checks. The foreign ministry has prepared amendments to ban imports of certain industrial goods of Russian and Belarusian origin.

Officials are also discussing cutting trade links further and reviewing specific exemptions in critical sectors. The screening joins a run of Latvian measures targeting Russian and Belarusian presence, including a ban on the two countries' citizens buying real estate, which parliament classified as a tool of hybrid warfare. Earlier amendments to the Immigration Law also stripped away one route to temporary residence permits obtained through investment programs.

Russia may be preparing to fake an attack on its own territory, Poland's top diplomat warns. Recent Kremlin statements look like the information groundwork for a staged provocation Moscow could use to justify new aggression against European countries, Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski wrote on X.

"I'm expecting an attack on Russian territory under a false flag, to which Putin will 'respond,'" Sikorski wrote, casting the expected provocation as a manufactured trigger rather than a real one.

His point is that the Kremlin may be building the pretext in public before acting on it.

Putin threatens Europe over drones

Sikorski was reacting to Russian ruler Putin's threats to strike European states if drone launches against Russian targets are traced to their soil.

"They understand there will be a retaliatory strike. I think everyone understands this, or should," Putin said at an informal meeting with military academy graduates, claiming countries try to distance themselves from such launches.

He also alleged the Baltic states hide drones in their airspace and pass them off as Ukrainian to avoid escalation with Moscow, per Militarnyi. 

Sikorski recalls Gleiwitz playbook

Sikorski reached back to 1939. On 31 August that year, Nazi Germany staged a fake assault on a German radio station in the border town of Gleiwitz, now Gliwice, dressing operatives in Polish uniforms to fabricate a pretext for invading Poland the next day.

The implication is that Moscow could try the same move, an attack built to look like someone else's, to license a wider war against Europe.

Russia has accused the Baltics of harboring Ukrainian drones, threatened Latvia with retaliation, and now floated strikes on Europe over drone launches, each step laying public groundwork. 

In 2025, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service Head Sergey Naryshkin accused NATO of escalating military activity near Russia’s borders. He warned that Poland and the Baltic states would be the first to suffer in the event of a war between Moscow and the Alliance.