(Bloomberg) — Finnish officials warned that drone activity was likely to continue around the Nordic country after two planes entered its airspace before crashing Sunday morning.
“These are individual Ukrainian drones that strayed into our territory,” Air Force Commander Timo Herranen said at a press conference. Prime Minister Petteri Orpo previously hinted as much in an interview with public broadcaster YLE.
It is the first known case of drones entering Finnish airspace since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago.
“Russia is conducting strong electronic jamming, which may explain why these drones also wandered into Finland,” Orpo said on Sunday, adding that Finland had not shot them down.
The drones landed near the small town of Kouvola in southeastern Finland, near a key military base. The city is about 70 kilometers (43 mi) from the Russian border.
For more than a week, Ukraine has been attacking Russian oil ports in the Baltic Sea, including Primorsk near Finland. On Sunday, the Ust-Luga terminal was damaged by a Ukrainian drone attack.
More than a hundred drones were detected near Finnish territory last weekend, some as far as 8 kilometers from the border, the air force chief told reporters, adding that the military remains on high alert.
Finland is the last European nation to see stray drones flying. Recently, a Ukrainian drone accidentally hit a power plant chimney in Estonia and others crashed in Latvia and Lithuania.
The drones that entered Finnish territory landed in sparsely populated areas and caused no injuries or significant property damage, according to police.
One drone that crashed north of Kouvola was tracked by an F/A-18 Hornet in Finnish airspace the whole time and identified as a Ukrainian AN-196. The second, which fell east of the city, was tracked only by radar and remains unidentified.
The National Investigation Agency is investigating the drones to determine whether they were carrying explosives and why they crashed in Finland.
A third drone that had earlier landed in Espoo was later found to be in civilian use, police said, posing no danger.
President Alexander Stubb stressed in a statement that there was no military threat to Finland and that the authorities were prepared for any future incidents.
“Finland is ready to monitor and protect its territory,” he said.
(Update with damage to Russia’s Ust-Luga in the sixth paragraph)
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