EU creates land, drone and sea “walls” to protect eastern flank

The European Union has agreed on a three-pronged approach to defending the eastern flank — a ground, drone, and sea “wall” — and has identified priorities for immediate action: improved detection, tracking, and interception capabilities for drones.

This was announced by European Commissioner for Defense and Space Andrius Kubilius at a press conference, Suspilne reports.

He presented the vision of the Eastern Flank project, which has three main components:

• "land wall" — systems to counter mobility at borders;
• "drone wall" — measures to counter airspace violations;
• "sea wall" — protective measures against possible maritime provocations, in particular for Romania and Bulgaria.

Kubilius noted that the meeting was attended by the defense ministers of countries located near Ukraine and Russia (Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania), as well as Hungary and Slovakia, the EU High Representative, the Danish Presidency of the Council and the Danish Defense Minister.

NATO representatives also joined the discussion as observers. He especially noted the presentation by the Minister of Defense of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal, which he called "priceless experience, tested in battles".

According to him, at todayʼs meeting, they decided to move from discussions to concrete actions and agreed on the key points of the project.

Kubilius called the most important priority for the “drone wall” to be increasing the capabilities to detect and track drones and the ability to intercept them, as such capabilities are “really lacking in some places”.

He emphasized that the project will be implemented in close cooperation with partners on the front lines and based on Ukrainian combat experience.

As a result, Kubilius called for coordinated and operational steps — from the deployment of technical solutions to the exchange of information between the countries of the region and NATO — so that the "drone wall" becomes an effective element of the overall defense system of the eastern flank.

Violation of NATO airspace by Russia

On the night of September 10, Polish airspace was violated by Russian drones during Russiaʼs attack on Ukraine. This was the first time that Polish aviation shot down drones over its territory.

On the evening of September 13, Russian drones once again flew into Romanian territory. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the drone entered Romanian territory by almost 10 km and was in the airspace of a NATO country for approximately 50 minutes.

Drone debris was also found on the beaches of Bulgaria and Latvia.

Three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets entered Estonian airspace over the Gulf of Finland without permission on September 19 and remained there for a total of 12 minutes.

On September 23, the main airport in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, was closed for four hours because of drones. At that time, police did not shoot down the unidentified UAVs. Denmark called the incident the most serious attack on its critical infrastructure and linked it to a series of Russian drone incursions and other violations across Europe.

That same night, drones were recorded over Norway’s main airport.

For more news and in-depth stories from Ukraine, please follow us on X.