STOCKHOLM, September 19. /TASS/. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s operation Eastern Sentry will kick off at the alliance’s south-eastern flank, in Poland and Romania, Finnish President Alexander Stubb has said.
"As far as the Eastern Sentry is concerned, I think, it will start very much at the south-eastern flank of the alliance, so we are talking, you know, Romania, Poland. And then we start moving up through the Baltic states, Finland, and up to the high North in Norway," the Finnish leader said at the Helsinki Security Forum.
Speaking of unmanned aerial vehicles potentially entering the country’s airspace, Stubb noted that Finland is "prepared enough" to deflect this threat. According to the Finnish president, NATO countries have "a lot to learn" from Ukraine - in terms of the use of drones and the means of fighting them as well as in "what kind of missiles to use or where." "I am sure that a lot of European states, including Finland, will be doing close cooperation on drones," he added.
On September 12, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said the alliance was launching Operation Eastern Sentry, which was the result of consultations on Article 4 of the NATO Treaty on September 10 at Poland’s request in connection with an incident involving unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the country. Denmark, France, the UK, Germany, Spain, Sweden, among others, plan to participate.
On the morning of September 10, Poland’s Armed Forces Operational Command announced the destruction of several objects identified as unmanned aerial vehicles that had violated national airspace. According to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, nineteen violations of the country’s airspace were reported overnight to September 10. In response to the incident, NATO, at Poland’s request, invoked Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty, launching consultations among alliance members.
Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said that during the night of September 9-10, Russian forces targeted Ukrainian military-industrial facilities in the Ivano-Frankovsk, Khmelnitsky, and Zhitomir regions, as well as in Vinnitsa and Lvov. The ministry emphasized that no targets within Polish territory were planned for destruction. It also noted that the UAVs allegedly crossing into Polish airspace had a maximum range of 700 kilometers. The agency expressed its readiness to hold consultations with Poland regarding the incident.