Ukraine's drone raid on St Petersburg on October 18 has revived a Russian argument that Moscow could hit the Baltic states in self-defence if Ukrainian drones continue to use their airspace to hit targets in Russia, without triggering Nato's collective defence.
In a massive strike at the weekend, Ukrainian drones set fire to the Petersburg Oil Terminal and the Ruchi fuel depot and hit a VK data centre in the attack on Russia's second city, killing one person. Leningrad region Governor Alexander Drozdenko said air defences downed 145 drones over the region that night but many got through the air defences.
The same morning an explosives-laden Ukrainian drone crashed near the village of Juodzionys in northern Lithuania, close to the Latvian border, damaging a car and triggering an air raid alert. Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevicius said there was "no doubt that it entered through the Schengen Area from Poland", and Warsaw has ordered a review of its radar data. Kaunas airport closed and two Italian Eurofighters were scrambled under Nato command.
A map circulated on X showing the route the Ukrainian drone that crashed in Lithuania on October 18 is claimed to have taken towards St Petersburg, via Poland and Lithuania. Source: X.
Kyiv acknowledged the drone was one of its and apologised within hours. "We regret the incident that occurred this morning in Lithuanian airspace, which may have resulted from Russian electronic warfare diverting drones during an operation against legitimate military targets in Russia," Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi said on X. "We apologise for any disruption, risks, and concern this may have caused.”
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi's apology to Lithuania, October 18. Source: X, via Military Summary.
Pro-Russian accounts were outraged at the attack on Russia “by a Nato member.” They published maps that show the main swarm flying north inside the Latvian and Estonian borders to reach St Petersburg from the west. Some commentators argued online that this gives Moscow the right to strike back under rarely-cited Article 51 of the UN Charter. While the widely-known Article 5 of the Charter gives a country attacked a collective security guarantee that brings in the other members of Nato, Article 51 more mundanely simply gives an attacked country the right to strike back.
The issue at hand is if Russia deems that it was the victim of an unprovoked attack from Poland or the Baltic states can it legitimately strike back and does that negate their Article 5 protections as Russia is retaliating, not attacking.
Kyiv sees it differently: presidential adviser Serhii Beskrestnov said the drones flew 1,000 km across four Russian regions guarded by air defences and jamming, according to Euromaidan Press.
A Telegram map republished by Military Summary claiming the route of the October 18 drone raid on St Petersburg, from Kyiv along the Latvian and Estonian borders. Unverified. Source: Supernova+ Telegram channel, via Military Summary.
Not the first time
The question is pertinent. As IntelliNews argued in a recent opinion piece, Europe is in danger of taking itself into war with Russia as it steps ever closer to the red lines that could trigger a military response directly on Europe from Russia. After the Trump administration ended all military and financial support for Ukraine, Europe has been increasingly building defence plants to produce weapons for Ukraine based on EU territory under the so-called Danish model, on the assumption that its Nato membership will make those facilities immune from attack by Russia. However, the Kremlin is taking the line that this takes Europe from mere “supporting” Ukraine to an active participant in the war with Russia. A particularly sore point has been Ukraine’s use of British-made Nyan drones, manufactured in Wiltshire, to strike oil refineries deep in Russian territory; the Kremlin has said that makes the factories in Wiltshire “legitimate military targets.” While no one is expecting Russian missiles to start falling in Wiltshire, as that red line comes closer it has already triggered an escalating hybrid war of sabotage and arson attacks inside the EU on these assets.
Not the first time
Rancour over the use of the Baltics as a “safe route” for Ukrainian drones attacking St Petersburg is not new. In the summer, Ukraine also launched a sustained attack on the Primorsk and Ust-Luga oil ports using the same route. Some stray Ukrainian drones also crashed in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland en route to their targets.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on March 31 that Russia would respond if other countries provided their airspace for hostile activity, and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the Baltic states in early April that they had "received an appropriate warning", as part of what Lithuanian military analysts called a Russian fear campaign.
Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu then put the argument in legal terms. "If these countries deliberately allow Ukraine to use their airspace, Moscow, according to Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, has the right to self-defence in response to an 'armed attack'," he said in April, as Europe debated Euro Nato plans for its own defence. The Baltic governments rejected the claims as disinformation, and on May 22 the Nordic and Baltic states jointly condemned Russian threats to use force against Latvia and its neighbours.
Article 51 recognises a state's "inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs". An attack by Ukraine does not become an armed attack by Lithuania or Latvia because a drone crosses their airspace, and Moscow would have to show the deliberate complicity it alleges.
The Baltic states say they have never let their airspace be used for strikes on Russia, and each stray drone has triggered air alerts, Nato scrambles and, in several cases, shoot-downs. Ukrainian spokesman Tykhyi’s apology suggests that Bankova did not inform its Baltic allies of their drones presence, although that could also be a ruse to avoid the Article 51 problem.
International lawyers Michael Schmitt and Klaudia Klonowska argued on Just Security in May that the law cuts the other way. Russia cannot claim self-defence for jamming that diverts drones onto Nato soil because its own armed attack on Ukraine bars that defence, they wrote, and "it is irrefutable that Russia violated the territorial sovereignty of the Baltic States" when its electronic warfare sent the drones there.
Nor would a Russian invocation of Article 51 switch off Nato's Article 5, say lawyers. That article is itself written as an exercise of "the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51" of the UN Charter, so a Russian missile strike on Lithuania or Latvia would be the kind of armed attack on an ally that Article 5 addresses. What Article 5 does not do is automatically oblige any ally to respond with force; there has to be a consultation first where each country then decides what action "it deems necessary." That means Moscow's threats are likely more aimed at the alliance's political cohesion rather than the UN’s legal text. Disunity in the EU is already mounting as economic and political pressures continue to build.
The risk is that the incidents keep coming. Drones have crashed or been shot down over the region repeatedly since March, Latvia's defence minister resigned in May after a drone hit oil tanks in Rezekne, and the three Baltic states have asked the EU for an urgent €500mn for drone defences. Each new airspace breach hands Moscow fresh material for an argument it has been rehearsing for seven months.