Estonia said the UN security council would hold an emergency meeting on Monday over Russian fighter jets’ violation of the country’s airspace as Donald Trump expressed his displeasure at the incursion and said he would help defend European Union members if Russia intensified hostilities. Nato forces intercepted three Russian MiG-31 fighters on Friday after they entered Estonian airspace over the Gulf of Finland, triggering Nato and European complaints of a dangerous new provocation, and a denial from Moscow. And on Sunday, two German Eurofighter jets were scrambled to intercept a Russian military aircraft above the Baltic Sea, reports Luke Harding. Germany’s air force said the Russian Il-20M reconnaissance plane in international airspace had switched off its transponders and ignored requests to make contact. Estonia’s foreign ministry said the emergency security council meeting was being convened “in response to Russia’s brazen violation of Estonian airspace”. Poland said earlier this month that Russian drones had repeatedly violated its airspace in an “act of aggression” during an attack on Ukraine.
Trump on Sunday joined the condemnation of the Estonian airspace violation, vowing to defend Poland and the Baltic states in case of escalation from Russia. Asked if he would help defend EU members if Russia intensified hostilities, the US president told reporters: “Yeah, I would. I would.” Trump said he had been briefed over the Estonia situation and added: “We don’t like it.” It was a change in tone from his reaction to the Polish airspace incursion, which he said “could have been a mistake”, prompting Poland’s foreign affairs minister to say that “that wasn’t a mistake”.
Estonia said it was convening Monday’s emergency security council meeting for the first time in 34 years of Estonian membership of the UN. Estonian foreign minister Margus Tsahkna said the violation was “part of a broader pattern of escalation by Russia” and that “this behaviour requires an international response”. Nato’s North Atlantic council will meet on Tuesday to discuss Russia’s Estonian violation, two officials told Reuters.
Ukraine said Russian strikes in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia overnight into Monday had killed two people and wounded two others, one seriously. Russian forces had “dropped at least five” bombs on the city, said Ivan Fedorov, the head of the regional military administration. Earlier, a man was killed and residential buildings and infrastructure were damaged by Russian shelling in Kostiantynivka in the Donetsk region, said the head of the city’s military administration, Serhii Horbunov.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine had been targeted by “more than 1,500 strike drones, over 1,280 guided aerial bombs and 50 missiles of various types” over the previous week. Zelenskyy also said on X on Sunday that “thousands of foreign components” were found in the Russian weaponry and that Ukraine was “counting on the 19th EU sanctions package to be truly painful, and on the United States to join the Europeans”. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen presented the sanctions package on Friday.
A Ukrainian drone attack on a resort area of the Crimea peninsula killed three people and injured 16, the area’s top official claimed on Sunday, in an attack denounced by Moscow. Sergei Aksyonov, the Moscow-appointed head of Crimea – which Russia illegally annexed in 2014 – gave the toll on Telegram. Ukrainian officials issued no comment and the report could not be independently verified. Aksyonov said earlier that a school in the town of Faros was also damaged and falling drone debris sparked fires on open ground near Yalta along Crimea’s southern shore. An independent website devoted to Crimean affairs, Krymsky Veter, said senior officials were likely staying in the region’s guest houses.
