The military command in Latvia announced that its warplanes shot down on Monday a drone that penetrated its airspace coming from Russian territory, as it put it, while the Kremlin refused to hold Moscow responsible for the penetration of drones into the airspace of the Baltics, amid the escalation of military tensions between Moscow and NATO.
In a statement, the military command announced the lifting of the state of air alert and the issuance of urgent instructions to the residents of eastern municipalities such as Lodza and Balvi to take cover, stressing the push of additional units to the eastern border to strengthen air defense systems after the recurrence of these infiltrations for the second time in two weeks.
The Ministry of Defense of Romania, a NATO member state, announced at the end of last month that a Russian drone had hit an apartment building inside its territory, in the city of Galate, near the border with Ukraine.
"On the night of May 28-29 , the Russian Federation resumed its attacks with drones against civilian targets and infrastructure in Ukraine, near the riverine border with Romania, and one of these drones entered Romanian airspace," the Romanian ministry said in a statement.
Mutual Russian-Ukrainian shelling
Russian forces on Monday launched intensive drone attacks and airstrikes in southeastern and central Ukraine, killing two civilians in Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed that a spent nuclear fuel storage facility near the Chernobyl plant in the north of the country was directly hit by Russian shelling.
In turn, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that its air defenses succeeded in shooting down 500 Ukrainian drones and 11 guided bombs in the past 24 hours , following Kyiv's intensification of its strikes on Russian oil refineries and depots.
London Movement
Politically, during talks at the British Prime Minister's Office, the Ukrainian president won the support of the leaders of the "European Troika" (the United Kingdom, France, and Germany) in his call for direct ceasefire negotiations.
The joint statement issued by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz affirmed support for the Ukrainian proposal to hold a direct dialogue between Kyiv and Moscow with the active participation of Europe and the United States to ensure a sustainable peace agreement.
Russian Position
Russian President Vladimir Putin ruled out any close meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, saying there was "no point" in meeting until the pillars of a potential long-term peace deal were reached, not a temporary understanding for several months.
At the same time, the Kremlin rejected European accusations that his country was responsible for undefined drone penetrations into the airspace of the Baltic states.
In the statement, the Kremlin described the Western statements as "baseless," coinciding with Zelensky's assertions that he had used back channels through his meeting with businessman Roman Abramovich to convey direct messages to Putin confirming Kyiv's clinging to its territory.
NATO Test
European sources told the British Financial newspaper that the Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia) and Poland have been living in an unprecedented state of military alert since last April, after their airspace turned into a theater for testing readiness and deterrence between Moscow and NATO.
European sources pointed out that this frequent flight of drones prompted European leaders to launch the "drone wall" project along the eastern border, coinciding with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte's announcement of the "Eastern Guard" program to deploy advanced American early warning and air defense systems to counter Moscow's tactical maneuvers.
The sources said that the London movement and the joint statement of the "European Troika" (Britain, France, and Germany) represent a remarkable shift in the diplomatic scene since the outbreak of the war in February 2022, as the three major European capitals seek to find a major foothold in the path of the upcoming negotiations to avoid the US exclusivity in the file, at a time when security risks are increasing as Ukrainian bioenergy facilities and nuclear facilities (such as the Chernobyl vicinity) enter the circle of direct targeting, which threatens to transfer the conflict to the Catastrophic levels beyond Ukraine's borders and into the depths of the old continent.