BRUSSELS – NATO allies are divided over whether the alliance should make it a policy to shoot down Russian jets that violate NATO’s airspace, with some countries including the US, Poland and Baltic nations signaling that future violations should be met with force, while others, including Germany, urge more restraint.
The issue came to a head during an emergency meeting of the North Atlantic Council on Tuesday, which was called by Estonia after three Russian fighter jets violated Estonian airspace last week for 12 minutes.
Representatives from several countries, including Poland and Estonia, wanted the joint statement following the meeting to make clear that any additional violations by Russia, including from manned aircraft, would be met with force, according to two NATO officials familiar with the discussions— something that NATO has the authority to do if necessary.
But Germany and some southern European countries pushed to remove that language from the statement, the NATO officials said, worrying it was too escalatory.
The top US general for Europe, Alexus Grynkewich, who serves as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, also gave pause to some countries in the meeting when he said the Russian incursion into Estonia was likely accidental given Russian pilots’ inexperience and insufficient training, CNN has reported.
The final statement, endorsed by all 32 member nations, landed somewhere in the middle.
“NATO and Allies will employ, in accordance with international law, all necessary military and non-military tools to defend ourselves and deter all threats from all directions. We will continue to respond in the manner, timing, and domain of our choosing,” it said.
The episode underscores how difficult it will be to get consensus on the issue, officials said, even as Russia has continued to push the boundaries of its attacks against Ukraine — which have repeatedly veered into NATO territory — and the deployment of its military assets near Europe.
Even President Donald Trump, who has long tried to give Russia the benefit of the doubt, weighed in on Tuesday, saying “Yes, I do,” when asked if he thinks NATO should shoot down Russian planes that violate its airspace.
In the last two weeks alone, Russia launched as many as 21 drones at Poland, some of which were shot down by NATO fighter jets; a Russian attack drone flew into Romania; three Russian jets flew over Estonia without permission and with their transponders turned off; and a Russian military aircraft flew low over a German Navy frigate in the Baltic Sea last weekend, Germany’s defense minister Boris Pistorius revealed on Wednesday.
Norway also announced on Monday that Russia had violated its airspace three times this year alone — twice over the sea near Vardø in Norway’s far northeast, and once over an uninhabited area in the northeastern county of Finnmark.
It is still unclear whether all of those incidents were intentional. NATO, US and European officials are still examining the possibility that the drone incursion into Poland, for example, was the result of Ukrainian electronic jamming that veered them off course, CNN has reported.
Another NATO official told CNN that they don’t view Trump’s comments as a push by the US president for NATO to shift its policy, and argued that NATO should not do so. “It’s his hot take of the hour,” the official said of Trump’s remark. “On our part, we’ve responded to the incursions with competence, meanwhile on Russia’s part, it’s incompetence. So why would we shoot them down?”
But for several NATO countries, particularly those on the eastern flank of the alliance closest to Russia, the intention is not what matters—they believe Moscow needs to face consequences for its increasingly reckless and dangerous behavior.
“If another missile or aircraft enters our space without permission – deliberately or ‘by mistake’ – and gets shot down, and the wreckage falls on NATO territory, please don’t come here to whine about it,” Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said on Monday during an emergency meeting at the United Nations. “You have been warned.”
Czech President Petr Pavel also said on Tuesday that “we must respond appropriately, including possibly shooting down Russian aircraft. What has happened in recent days in Poland and Estonia, and what has been happening in Ukraine for four years now, concerns us all. If we don’t stick together, sooner or later it will happen to us too.”
A senior NATO official told CNN he believes Russia is probing weak points in NATO’s defenses and collecting information on how far the alliance is willing to go to protect its airspace, a concern that Germany’s defense minister Boris Pistorius echoed on Tuesday.
“The incursion of Russian drones and warplanes deep in Polish and Estonian airspace and the overflight of a German frigate in the Baltic Sea within a few days make it clear that Russia is literally testing borders, including of NATO states, with increasing frequency and intensity,” Pistorius said.
But Pistorius also pushed back strongly against getting drawn into Russia’s “escalation trap” and urging calm in NATO’s response.
“Frivolous demands to bring something down from the sky” are unhelpful, Pistorius said on Wednesday. “Prudence is not cowardice, but rather responsibility toward your own country and toward peace in Europe.”
Finnish President Alexander Stubb similarly urged caution, advising allies on Tuesday in an interview with Bloomberg “not to overreact but be firm enough, because the only thing Russia understands is power.”
Grynkewich, the commander of US European Command who is dual-hatted as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, told French newspaper Le Monde on Wednesday that shooting down a fighter jet is much riskier than taking down a drone.
“It’s a much easier decision to shoot down an unmanned drone that comes into the airspace,” he said. “We do have to take into account factors like: where is it, what’s underneath it when we shoot it down, what is the risk to the population of engaging it and what is it threatening.”
But shooting down manned aircraft like fighter jets clearly carries “a higher risk of escalation if there’s an engagement that kills someone on either side,” Grynkewich said. “I can say that if there’s a bona fide threat from any kind of item in the air, manned or unmanned, etc., we’re ready to take whatever action is necessary to defend our populations.”
Grynkewich acknowledged the varying approaches within NATO on this issue, telling Le Monde that each nation within the alliance has different expectations of when and how NATO assets should intervene. Some countries like Poland want “a very broad application” of NATO assets to engage possible threats, he said, but “other nations make different judgments.”
“We work with them on what are the parameters [in which] they would want us to engage, and when would they want to take national action versus NATO action,” Grynkewich said. So it’s not the same in every nation, but we work very closely with them to make sure that we limit the number of restrictions as much as possible, because that gives us the most tactical flexibility.” – CNN
