Lithuania’s defense minister said today that NATO aircraft stationed in the Baltic states should shoot down Russian drones within the airspace of Lithuania and its neighboring countries, following the downing of a Russian drone in Latvia last year. week.

After the three Baltic countries joined NATO in 2004, their airspace is patrolled by NATO aircraft, as these countries do not have the necessary planes.

The NATO mission to monitor the airspace of the Baltic States “must not only patrol but also, if necessary, if possible, if the weather permits, shorten the chain of decisions at the NATO level so that it can take off immediately and destroy the drones,” Laurinas Kastsiunas told reporters.

These statements come after an Iranian-made Russian Shahed drone crashed in neighboring Latvia without exploding on Saturday.

On Tuesday, Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics said his country was discussing the problem with allies.

“We are raising the issue of drone interception protocols with our NATO partners and asking allied fighters to be used as soon as a drone approaches our borders,” he told the press, estimating that the problem stems from, among other things, the fact that the aircraft they receive orders from NATO, and not at the local level, which slows down the processes.

This week, Baltic officials also called on NATO to speed up implementation of the rotational air defense model.

NATO countries lack sufficient ground-based air defense systems, but agreed last year to a plan to deploy them in the short term on the eastern flank as part of efforts to deter Russia.

In April, the Netherlands deployed a Patriot missile system for exercises in Lithuania, but the Baltic states want the region’s air defenses to be permanently secured.

In early September, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Warsaw should have the right to shoot down Russian missiles that threaten its territory when they are already over neighboring Ukraine.