NATO, whose military aid and support has been vital for Ukraine in its war with Russia, is facing growing calls to do more to fend off Russian missiles and drone strikes -- a few of which have violated NATO members' airspace.
Romania and Latvia, both NATO members, have recently reported that Russian military drones had violated their airspace. Neither country interceded militarily, although Romania did have military jets shadow the drone and later said it lacked the legislation to act.
Romania also said that "pieces of a Russian drone" had been found at an "impact site" on the outskirts of the village of Periprava in Tulcea, along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. Latvia said that the drone had flown into the country's airspace from Belarus and crashed in the municipality of Rezekne.
While rare, incidents of drones and missiles, nearly all believed to be Russian, have crossed or crashed into states neighboring Ukraine -- including Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, and now Latvia -- since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Romania has particularly suffered. It shares a 650-kilometer border with Ukraine, and has territory that lies a few hundred meters from Ukrainian Danube River ports, which have been frequent Russian targets.
This pales in comparison to what Ukraine has endured. Ukraine has been hit by some 15,000 Russian air or drone strikes since the beginning of the 2022 invasion, with the volume of strikes increasing sharply since mid-2023.
Russia lobs daily missiles and drones at targets in Ukraine, causing already at least $155 billion in damage to civilian infrastructure, according to the last estimate by the Kyiv School of Economics.
Russia's invasion has killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians, destroyed cities, and forced millions of people from their homes.
Perhaps the most senior Western official to call for a more robust Western response to Russian missiles and drones was Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski. In a recent interview with the U.K.'s Financial Times, Sikorski said Poland had a "duty" to shoot down Russian missiles over Ukraine.
NATO has rejected such calls.
"Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian drone fragments and missiles have been found on Allied territory on several occasions. These acts are irresponsible and potentially dangerous," a NATO official who didn't want to be named told RFE/RL in a written statement.
"While we recognize the right of every ally to protect its own airspace, what individual Allies do in support of Ukraine can also matter for NATO as a whole. Allies will continue to consult on further steps to protect and defend Allied territory. What is clear is that NATO will not become a party to the conflict," the official added.
But some military analysts argue that helping Kyiv down drones and missiles over Ukraine, along with intercepting and eliminating aerial threats that stray into the territory of neighboring countries, would not be an escalation. They argue that failure to do so is only emboldening Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Russia has been pressing us in so many places, increasingly confident that we won't actually do anything," argued Ben Hodges, a retired U.S. lieutenant general and former commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe. "It's well past time to take more active steps to help Ukraine win as well as to protect innocent people," Hodges told RFE/RL.
"All countries have the absolute right for self-defense and control of their air, land, and sea space. China and Russia routinely violate those spaces. States have the right under international law to shoot down unidentified craft in their airspace," argued Alexander Crowther, a retired U.S. Army infantry colonel and senior research fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), a Washington-based think tank, in comments to RFE/RL.
This comes as the West, namely the United States, weighs whether to allow Ukraine to use Western-supplied missiles to strike military targets deeper inside Russia, especially now that Russia has reportedly received more deadly missiles from Iran.
Ukrainian officials pressed U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his British counterpart, David Lammy, on this during a visit to Kyiv on September 11.
The NATO official speaking to RFE/RL on background said the military alliance had "made unprecedented contributions to Ukraine's defenses, spending roughly 40 billion euros a year to support Ukraine militarily."
NATO 'Air-Defense Shield'
Fredrik Wesslau, a former Swedish diplomat and fellow at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies, recently laid out in the U.S.-based Foreign Affairs journal a proposal for NATO to protect its eastern flank and provide western Ukraine with much-needed air cover.
"The idea is to deploy ground and air assets from NATO allies, so, for instance, Patriot systems, or F-16 [fighter jets] to Poland, Slovakia, and Romania on their side of the border with Ukraine, at strategic locations, and use these assets to intercept Russian drones and missiles that first of all, enter the airspace of these allies, but also to intercept them over Ukrainian territory when they're heading toward NATO and NATO allies," Wesslau explained to RFE/RL in an interview.
Some analysts have argued such plans present logistical challenges.
"If you're going to engage targets over Ukrainian airspace, there needs to be some kind of coordination mechanism so that Ukrainian weapons don't conflict with NATO weapons and the identification of Russian missiles is clear to all sides," William Taylor, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, recently told Australia's ABC News.
Involving at least two command-and-control arrangements and multiple countries identifying friendly versus enemy targets, "would make it difficult," Taylor said. "The best case is when there is one system."
"Well, I think for this to work, there would have to be a degree of integration with Ukrainian air defense," Wesslau countered. "I mean, to some extent, this already exists today, but I think the idea is that this would be, you know, this air-defense shield would be operated by a coalition of the willing."
"I understand that NATO does not want to confront Russia, however, individual states can defend their own airspace. Note that Turkey, a NATO member, shot down a Russian aircraft that violated their airspace in 2015," Crowther added, referring to an incident that Putin referred to as "a stab in the back."
The United States has already proved it is willing to take such action elsewhere, Hodges pointed out.
"We do this in the Red Sea, defending international shipping against Huthi missiles and Israeli citizens from Iranian missiles. Why can't we protect innocent Ukrainian civilians from Russian missiles?" Hodges asked.
More than 300 missiles and drones were fired from Iran toward Israel late on April 13, but virtually all were intercepted before entering Israeli territory. U.S., British, and Israeli forces destroyed nearly all the projectiles.
"Shaheds (Iranian military drones) in the skies above Ukraine sound identical to those over the Middle East. The impact of ballistic missiles, if they are not intercepted, is the same everywhere," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy tweeted on April 15.
Later that same day, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby was asked by reporters why the United States and allies had shot down Iranian drones over Israel but not Ukraine.
"Two different conflicts, different airspace, different threat picture. And the president has been clear since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine that the United States is not going to be involved in...that conflict in a combat role," Kirby said.
However, the ground could be shifting, albeit gradually, with Ukraine's Western allies less likely to take a cautious approach.
"Well, look, I think the more we don't react, the greater the risk becomes, in a sense, because it's quite clear that Russia is prodding and pushing and testing, and if there's no response, it pushes further. And this, in a sense, increases the stakes and also increases the danger of escalation," explained Wesslau.
"Some allies are opposed, some are for, but I think this is one of these things, which will become more topical as time goes on, and as we see more and more of these incursions by Russian drones and missiles."
