On May 16, 2024, pilots of the FPV Kamikaze UAV “Sharp Kartuza” division prepared for combat flights in the Kharkiv region, 8 kilometers from the Russian border.
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Lithuania’s interior minister announced on Friday that six NATO countries bordering Russia are joining forces to build a “drone wall” to protect their borders.
Lithuanian Interior Minister Agni Bilotet told local news agency BNS: “This is a completely new thing, a drone wall stretching from Norway to Poland. The goal is to use drones and other technologies to protect our border.
“It’s not just physical infrastructure, surveillance systems, but also drones and other technologies that will allow us to guard against provocations from unfriendly countries and prevent smuggling,” she said.
Other countries participating include Lithuania’s Baltic neighbors Latvia and Estonia, as well as Poland, Finland and Norway.
Bilotet did not provide details on funding, timelines or technical aspects of the programme, but said EU funds could play a role and each country had to do its “homework”.
The Financial Times quoted Finnish Interior Minister Mari Rantanen as saying that the drone wall plan would be “improved in time”.
Finland, which joined NATO in 2023, shares an 832-mile border with Russia.
The interior ministers of the six countries involved in the drone wall plan held a meeting in Riga, the capital of Latvia, from May 23 to 24. Examples include Russia or Belarus sending large numbers of undocumented asylum seekers from Africa and the Middle East across their borders.
“Our goal is to ensure that Finland has effective means to address situations where instrumentalized immigration is used to put pressure on Finland,” Rantanen said in a statement during the event.
“The phenomenon of instrumentalized migration at the EU’s external borders is a common challenge faced by our countries. Finland is also committed to finding EU-level solutions to address this phenomenon.”
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