NATO drones have been trying to violate the Russian state border in the Pskov region for years, Governor Mikhail Vedernikov has revealed.
“The Pskov region borders on three states, two of them part of the NATO bloc…Today they like talking about how the alliance has sought ‘peaceful coexistence’ with us…Pskov has also been repeatedly subjected to this ‘good neighborliness’ policy of NATO’s,” Vedernikov said at a media forum on Saturday.
“We have never spoken extensively about this, but there have even been attempts to illegally cross our border with military drones and other aircraft. Such ‘peaceful engagement’ was in full bloom even before the start of the special military operation, and clearly the situation has become even more aggravated,” the governor said.
Vedernikov did not elaborate on NATO’s drone operations along the border area, or measures taken by the Russian side to neutralize the intruding UAVs.
The governor also listed off other acts of "good neighborliness" by the Baltic countries’ governments, including Latvian and Estonian authorities’ “empty statements about territorial claims” against Russia, and the “massive and targeted” issuance of EU passports to residents of areas of the Pskov region near the border.
Situated on the border with Estonia, Latvia, and Belarus, Pskov has been on the front line of the standoff between Russia and NATO since long before Russia kicked off its military operation in Ukraine in February. The Russian military has regularly reported on the tracking and intercept of dozens of NATO surveillance aircraft, bombers, and large spy drones in the region’s vicinity going back to the mid-2010s.
The area comprising the Pskov and Leningrad regions near Russia’s borders in the Baltic Sea is one of four major approaches by NATO and US air power along which the bloc has sought to ramp up its surveillance and drilling activities near Russia, with the others including Crimea and the Black Sea, Murmansk, and the Russian Far East. The Russian MoD has reported on the detection and interception of thousands of alliance aircraft along these approaches over the past eight years.
The escalation of tensions between Moscow and NATO has seen a dramatic increase in the size of the NATO deployments along Russia’s borders in recent months. Earlier this month, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported that the NATO grouping near Russia has grown by 250 percent since February, and now constitutes more than 30,000 troops.