Six NATO countries announce plan to defend their borders

“Not only with physical infrastructure, surveillance systems, but also with drones and other technologies, which would allow us to protect ourselves against provocations from hostile countries and prevent smuggling,” she said .

Other participating states are Lithuania’s Baltic neighbors Latvia and Estonia, as well as Poland, Finland and Norway.

Details such as funding, timing and technical aspects of the project were not provided, but Bilotaite said EU funds could play a role and each country had to do its “homework”.

In an interview with Finnish television channel Yle, cited by the Financial Times, Finnish Interior Minister Mari Rantanen said the drone wall project would “get better with time.”

Finland, which joined NATO in 2023, shares an 832-mile border with Russia.

Interior ministers from the six countries participating in the drone wall project met on May 23 and 24 in Riga, the Latvian capital. They discussed security threats as well as the issue of non-military tactics such as “instrumentalized migration”, citing cases where Russia or Belarus sent masses of undocumented asylum seekers from Africa and the Middle East beyond their borders.

“Our goal is to ensure that Finland has effective means to deal with situations in which instrumentalized migration is used to put pressure on Finland,” Rantanen said in a statement at the event.

“The phenomenon of instrumental migration at the EU’s external borders constitutes a common challenge for our countries. Finland also wishes to find solutions at EU level to combat this phenomenon.”