Czech President Petr Pavel joined a growing list of European politicians demanding that NATO shoot down Russian jets alleged to be violating NATO airspace. “Russia will realise very quickly that they have made a mistake and crossed the acceptable boundaries,” Pavel said according to the Czech News Agency, reported The Independent.
Another politician joining the madness was Jürgen Hardt, the foreign policy spokesman for Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU in the Bundestag. “The Kremlin needs a clear stop sign,” said Jürgen Hardt, in a story published by the RND media group on Sept. 21, reported DPA. “Only a clear message to Russia that any military border violation will be met with military force, including the shooting down of Russian fighter jets over NATO territory, will have an effect,” Hardt said.
“These provocations and tests by Russia will only end if we respond clearly to all military border violations,” he stressed. “The alternative would be for Russian war logic to continue to escalate. Now it is airspace violations, soon it will be the bombing of individual targets, then Russian soldiers will come.”
Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovile Sakaliene, who first made the suggestion about shooting down Russian planes, is keeping up the hysteria over Russia’s alleged airspace violations of NATO countries. “Russia is testing NATO again—dozens of drones in Poland last week, drones in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and now fighter jets in Estonian skies. These are deliberate provocations,” she told Fox News yesterday. “They are deliberate tests—tests of our readiness, our resolve, and of the limits of our deterrence.” Sakaliene claimed the Sept. 19 violation was just the latest in “an escalating pattern of pressure by Russia.”
“For Estonia, for Poland, for Lithuania, for all of NATO’s eastern flank, this is a direct threat—not just to territorial integrity, but to citizen safety,” she added.
“Our biggest risk currently is miscalculation by Russia,” Sakaliene hyperventilated further. “Does Russia believe that NATO will not allow violations of its territory? Does Russia believe that Europe is going to strike back together with United States? That’s now the last line of defense between if and when [war with Russia happens].”
U.S. President Donald Trump himself told reporters before departing for the Charlie Kirk memorial in Arizona that the U.S. will provide assistance in the defense of Poland and the Baltic states if relations with Russia escalate. “Yeah, I will,” he said, replying to a question on the matter, reported TASS, though apparently without any elaboration.
