Lithuania claimed that an explosives-laden Ukrainian drone that recently crashed in its territory on the same day as a major Ukrainian attack against St. Petersburg entered the country from Poland, while Poland said that it’ll demand an explanation from Ukraine about this after the news became public. Some in Russia have long suspected that Ukraine has been flying drones over NATO airspace for facilitating strikes against their country’s second-largest city. This latest incident lends credence to that.
While that’s already troubling enough since Russia’s possible interception of Ukrainian drones over Baltic airspace in self-defense could spark an uncontrollable escalation cycle with NATO, there might be more to the story that makes it even worse, according to Polish media. Polsat News cited “unofficial findings within the Ministry of National Defense, (which) reported that the drone took off from Lithuanian territory—approximately 30 kilometers from the Polish border—and flew deep into the country.”
While the Defense Ministry denied the report, it nevertheless might still be true, thus making the latest blame game a cover-up after that Ukrainian drone crashed in Lithuania. Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service warned earlier in the year that their country was ready to retaliate against Latvia following reports that Ukraine was plotting to launch drones against Russia from there. No retaliation ever happened, thus suggesting that Latvia rubbished those plans, but Lithuania might have replaced its role.
There are three reasons to suspect that this is the case. First, Polish-Ukrainian ties remain frayed after Zelensky glorified the Volhynia Genocide’s OUN-UPA culprits in late spring, so Poland might not feel comfortable risking a serious security incident with Russia over Ukrainian drones flying over its airspace (even if it had previously allowed them). Second, while it was argued here that Ukrainian drones sometimes fly over neutral Belarus’ airspace, they can still be tracked and later intercepted by Russia.
And finally, Ukraine’s use of Lithuania as a drone launchpad against Russia obviates the aforesaid obstacles to its plans, and its location enables them all to play it cool by pretending that Ukraine flew drones over Lithuania from Poland if something goes wrong and this is exposed like what just happened. Be that as it may, this possible arrangement is still incredibly risky for Lithuania considering that it borders both Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave and ally Belarus, thus making it very vulnerable to retaliation.
This observation further contextualizes Lithuania’s effort to change its legislation so that it could one day host US nukes should Washington ever agree to base them there in parallel with its complementary effort to host a permanent US military base. Vilnius might believe that such talk could deter Moscow from one day retaliating like it threatened to do against Latvia, but in reality, it might actually deter Washington from acceding to these proposals so as to not risk a major war with Russia over Lithuania.
Polsat News, the source of the speculation that there might be a cover-up going on over the latest Lithuanian drone incident, is generally considered to be reliable. The odds of its editors publishing a made-up claim that the drone in question was launched from within Lithuania itself and then attributing that to the Defense Ministry are extremely low. Therefore, whether that’s what actually happened or not, they were almost certainly told that story by some defense officials for reasons that remain elusive.
