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Nato members along Russia’s border are planning to create a new ‘drone border’ to protect against ‘unfriendly countries’.
From Norway to Poland, the drone border will help monitor the Nato bloc through unmanned vehicles, Lithuania’s interior minister said.
Agnė Bilotaitė told news source BNS: ‘This is a completely new thing—a drone border from Norway to Poland, the purpose of which would be to protect our border with the help of drones and other technologies.’
The drone wall will also incorporate counter-drone technology, and was partly inspired by the war in Ukraine spurring faster innovation in drone technology.
Estonian Interior Minister Lauri Laanemets told The Baltic Times: ‘As a venture of this scale, it’s unique. Drone surveillance and anti-drone capability is crucial both for deterrence and for countering the influence activities of our eastern neighbor.
‘As we see in the case of Ukraine, there is a constant race between the adversaries to develop technology, and new ways to use drones are continually being found in warfare.’
Earlier this month, Jarosław Stróżyk, head of Poland’s counterintelligence service, said the Kremlin is considering annexing parts of Estonia and Sweden, as part of a wider plan to take over the Baltic states should Ukraine fall.
‘Putin is certainly already prepared for some mini-operation against one of the Baltic countries, for example, to enter the famous Narva [municipality in Estonia] or to land on one of the Swedish islands,’ he told Polish outlet Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
Yet despite his imperialist ambitions, he is currently being held back by the West’s continued support for Ukraine, which has been stronger than anticipated.
He added: ‘What the West is doing together to support Ukraine shows him that in the event of an attack on Nato, the Western response would be even greater.’
Recent weeks have seen a number of European countries issue warnings about Putin’s increased aggression as NATO members have begun making preparations for the next phase of the war.
Poland has already said they are willing to host nuclear weapons on their borders as Russia seeks to relocate parts of their nuclear arsenal to neighbouring Belarus and fortify Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave located between Lithuania and Poland.
Meanwhile, Belarusian president and Putin crony President Aleksandr Lukashenko warned that the escalating conflict could result in a nuclear ‘apocalypse’.
Both Russian and Belarusian troops have been stationed on Belarus’ borders since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, and Lukashenko recently said his men would reach the Polish border in a matter of hours if conflict escalates.
Lukashenko said: ‘From Vitebsk we’ve transferred a couple of battalions and are 1716747181 standing head to head with Nato.
‘These battalions are at full operational readiness, with a readiness of three hours from leaving their place of deployment.
‘Three hours and we’re there.’
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