A reported 19 Russian drones, launched from Belarus, which borders Poland, entered deep into Polish territory during the night of Tuesday-Wednesday, with Poland's military downing up to four of them.

Pevkur told "Aktuaalne kaamera" that Estonia and NATO as a whole are taking steps to improve the defense capabilities on the alliance's and EU's eastern flank in the wake of the incident, and will be providing even greater support than before to Ukraine, which Russia has been attacking with drones on an unprecedented scale since its invasion began.

Is Russia testing NATO and U.S. President Donald Trump's reaction?

Certainly this is an extremely serious incident. The fact that such a large number of drones reach NATO territory is unprecedented. Equally unprecedented is that, for the first time in NATO's history, NATO has used military force to down something in its own airspace; nothing like this has ever happened before. We are in a totally new situation, and for this reason Poland also requested the application of Article 4 at the North Atlantic Council. They discussed this situation on Wednesday, while now would be the right time to say that we will significantly increase the weapons aid given to Ukraine, and especially via air strike means.

Estonian people want to know — will we be waking up one morning to find 19 drones have strayed here too?

This specific incident showed, of course, that these were Russian drones, presumably targeted at Ukraine's western region, around Lviv. The fact that they reached Poland still needs confirmation — was it a deliberate Russian action and were they indeed aimed at Poland, or at Ukrainian military targets instead.

We are just reassuring ourselves in saying this.

The question is not about calming down, the question is about confirming facts. As it concerns Estonia, the risk for us is certainly lower, as Poland lies on Russia's attack vector on the way towards Ukraine, or vice versa, but that does not mean we do not need to be prepared.

Last week we decided together with the Minister of the Interior that we will merge our pictures. Today I spoke with the Latvian Defense Minister, and the day after tomorrow we will have a joint call with the Latvian and Lithuanian ministers, and we will also try to obtain pictures there, as the most important thing we saw in Poland's case also was actually an issue with early warning. It is important that you know ahead of time when something is about to enter your airspace, so then it is possible to react, as in Poland — F35 as well as F16 fighters took off, and some of the drones were destroyed.

What can we now collectively learn from this? What can we ourselves do in the future?

What we are doing ourselves is: Tomorrow there will be a government session, where we will provide a quick overview of what stage our developments in air policing and air surveillance have reached. Naturally [there is] NATO as well; just today the Supreme Allied Commander Europe was visiting us. We went over this topic with him, and he stressed that NATO's eastern flank is of course of utmost importance, and presence and readiness must be raised here.

What we ourselves are doing is: Surveillance capabilities will already improve this year. There was also a steering group meeting at the Ministry of Defense today, where we looked into whether we can also install acoustic sensors. We will connect the three Baltic states' sensors together, and, as concerns response capability, this relies on our allies and their fighter planes in peacetime too. If this situation should escalate, if we have to raise our readiness, then naturally it would also be possible for us to raise our air defense units to a higher level of readiness. In Estonia we have the PIORUN and Mistral short-range air defense systems, as well as ZU air defense cannon.

Do NATO members further from the eastern flank find it more convenient to conclude that the drones reached Poland accidentally, or deliberately?

Nobody does anything just because it is more convenient. All possible information is identified, and the facts are laid on the table. Military decisions cannot be made according to what is more convenient. Military decisions are made according to what is important and what is needed.

Believe me, the Polish government has no desire to make any decisions of convenience. They worry about their people in exactly the same way as we must worry about our own country, and people.

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