| Date | 25 Aug 2025 |
| Tracker | European Airspace Violations |
| Type | Incursion |
| Location |
Tartu County, Estonia
58.41, 26.80 (approximate) |
During a Ukrainian drone attack on Saint Petersburg and Ust-Luga, a drone crossed Latvian airspace and continued into Estonia, where it came down and exploded in a field in Tartu County. An early Estonian investigation identified it as a Ukrainian machine that had been pushed off course by Russian radio jamming. It is the first entry in this log of a pattern that would dominate the Baltic states through 2026.
| Date | Type | Incident |
|---|---|---|
| 20 Aug 2025 | Strike | Russian drone crashes and explodes in Osiny, eastern Poland |
| 3 Sep 2025 | Incursion | Russian drone fragments identified near Plauru after initial denial |
| 4 Sep 2025 | Incursion | Two Russian drones monitored inside Polish airspace |
| 8 Sep 2025 | Incursion | Drone with Cyrillic markings crashes near the Belarus border |
GlobalMilitary.net's 2026 inventory snapshot shows nine NATO members — Iceland, Luxembourg, the three Baltic states, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia and Slovenia — hold no fixed-wing fighters, attack aircraft or bombers and depend on Allied air policing.
GlobalMilitary.net's incident log counts 45 established violations of European airspace between January 1 and August 16, 2026, against 31 for the whole of 2025 - and almost all of the growth sits in incidents that ended with a shootdown or an explosion on the ground.
An Italian Eurofighter on NATO Baltic Air Policing duty destroyed an unidentified drone over eastern Latvia before dawn on 14 August, the second time the alliance's quick-reaction force has shot one down over the country this year.