Maria Zakharova, senior spokeswoman of Russia’s Foreign Ministry, on Monday warned leadership in neighboring Baltic States that the Kremlin would hold them responsible and take direct action, including possibly by military means, if they didn’t stop helping Ukraine blow up Russian oil export infrastructure on the Baltic Sea.
Less than twelve hours later, Zakharova’s threat notwithstanding, Ukrainian drones flying an ingress route paralleling Belarus and NATO airspace hit and set afire Russia’s biggest oil export terminal on the Baltic Sea – for the fifth time in seven days.
Speaking to Moscow reporters at a Foreign Ministry press briefing on Monday, Zakharova accused Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania of allowing Ukrainian attack drones to enter their airspace to enable attacks by Kyiv’s robot aircraft against targets along Russia’s Baltic Sea shore.
“These countries have been given an appropriate warning. If the regimes of these countries are sufficiently wise, they will listen. If they do not, then they will have to deal with retaliation,” Zakharova warned. She reiterated the threat in comments to reporters on Tuesday.Dmitry Peskov, personal spokesman to Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a March 31 briefing, said that the Kremlin was investigating what he called evidence of Baltic state complicity in recent Ukrainian military strikes against targets in Russia’s Leningrad Oblast region, and that if those NATO states are actually helping Ukraine attack Russia, Russia would respond in kind.
“Of course, we believe that if rights of airspace transit have been given [by a Baltic state to Ukraine] for carrying out hostile terrorist activity against the Russian Federation, this will oblige us to draw the appropriate conclusions and take corresponding measures,” Peskov said.
All three Baltic states have rejected the Kremlin narrative that they have opened their airspace to Ukrainian drones for sneak attacks against Russia. Latvia’s Defense Ministry in a March 31 statement said: “Latvia rejects as completely unfounded false allegations spread by Russia that Latvia has allowed its territory to be used for drone attacks against Russia, and demands the immediate withdrawal of this blatantly false information.“Kyiv Post review of open source air watch information networks in Ukraine, Belarus, and northwest Russia found very strong evidence that Ukrainian drones flying strikes against Russia’s Baltic Sea region fly a route some 20-50 kilometers (12-31 miles) east of Belarus, and once exiting Ukrainian territory, do not enter NATO airspace, or even approach it particularly closely.
The most recent strikes overnight April 6-7, launched per those air watch networks around midnight Moscow time, most likely followed a flight path from sites in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv or Sumy region, passed over Russia’s Bryansk, Smolensk and Novgorod regions, and dove in to attack Russia’s Ust-Luga oil-loading terminal between 4-5 a.m. on Tuesday, Kyiv Post review of regional air raid reports found.
Zakharova’s comments in response to a reporter’s question were made late on the afternoon on Monday, and her remarks were first aired by Kremlin-controlled outlets like TASS and RIA Novosti at around 7 p.m. Moscow time.
Ukrainian drones tipped into terminal dives targeting the Baltic Sea oil loading site Ust-Luga about 10 hours after Zakharova made her Monday warning, Kyiv Post researchers calculated.
Russian state media avoids publicizing the fact of Ukrainian strikes against Russian energy infrastructure in preference to a narrative of overwhelming Russian military might that will soon crush all Ukrainian resistance. Attacks against Russia’s Baltic Sea oil-loading terminals and damage caused by them, hitting Russia’s second-wealthiest Leningrad Oblast region, have proved difficult for the Kremlin to suppress entirely, because of undeniable fires and damage observed by tens of thousands of digitally connected citizens living near energy infrastructure sites hit by Ukrainian strikes.
According to Kremlin critics, the objective of the new Moscow messaging that NATO is secretly complicit in successful Ukrainian drone attacks against Russia’s Baltic region, is to prevent the Russian public from viewing Ukraine as a serious military opponent to Russia, or criticizing the national government for its inability to prevent Ukrainian aircraft from flying unimpeded through Russian airspace.
Colonel Ants Kiviselg, Commander of the Estonian Defence Forces Intelligence Center, in an April 6 interview with the Estonian public broadcaster ERR (Eesti Rahvusringhääling) specifically denied his country is helping Ukraine attack Russia. He told viewers that Tallinn is working with Kyiv to make sure Ukrainian drones stay out of NATO airspace.
“We have recommended (Ukraine’s) choosing attack corridors so that they do not enter Estonian airspace, although it is impossible to completely rule this out. Russian air defense activity is certainly also a factor, which is why drones end up here,” Kiviselg said.
Ukraine’s latest Ust-Luga strike, on Tuesday, set fires visible from space and restarted a blaze that Russian firefighters on Monday had finally extinguished only after five days’ work. In one of the most intense sustained series of long-range strikes conducted by Ukraine against a target inside Russia, for the entire war, drones hit the facility on March 22, 25, 27, 29 and 31, each time igniting fires.
Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s Primorsk facility, a smaller oil loading terminal on the Baltic Sea, on March 22-23, March 25-27, March 29, and overnight on April 4-5. Fires there were extinguished by April 6, Russian news reports said.