JAKARTA - The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) warned Russia on Tuesday it would use "all necessary military and non-military tools" to defend itself, condemning Moscow for violating Estonian airspace in "an increasingly irresponsible pattern of behavior".
The warning comes after Estonia said on Friday three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets violated its airspace for 12 minutes before Italian NATO fighter jets escorted them out.
A week earlier, about 20 Russian drones entered Polish airspace, prompting NATO jets to shoot down some of them and the alliance to strengthen defenses on Europe's eastern side.
NATO said in a statement it would respond to Russia's actions by "the way, time and territory we choose".
"Russia bears full responsibility for these actions, which are escalative in nature, risk of miscalculation, and endanger lives. These actions must be stopped," he stressed.
"Russia must not hesitate: NATO and the Allies will use, in accordance with international law, all necessary military and non-military means to defend themselves and ward off all threats from all directions," the statement said.
The incidents have sparked calls from several European politicians and analysts for NATO to shoot down Russian manned fighter entering alliance airspace.
However, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius warned against such talks.
"The reckless demands to shoot down something from the sky or send a certain message of force do not help in this situation," he told reporters in Berlin after a meeting with his Swedish counterpart.
In a statement, NATO also stated its members would not be hindered from continuing to support Ukraine "in carrying out its human rights to defend itself against the brutal and unwarranted Russian aggression war".
NATO's statement follows a meeting of the North Atlantic Council, which consists of ambassadors from 32 alliance member countries, which were held after Estonia implemented Article 4 of the NATO founding agreement.
It is known, Article 4 NATO states allies will "consult together whenever, according to the opinion of one of them, the territorial integrity, political independence, or security" of a member is threatened.
This is only the ninth time in 76 years that NATO's history has been implemented and two of them took place this month in response to incidents in Poland and Estonia.
At the alliance's headquarters in Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Russian jets over Estonia were not shot down because they were deemed not to pose a direct threat.
NATO commanders have the authority to "take a final decision" if they judge that infiltrating aircraft pose such a threat, he said.
"We are a defense alliance, yes, but we are not naive. So we saw what happened," said Secretary General Rutte.
"If it is not intentional, then it is clearly incompetent. And of course, even though it is an inability, we still have to defend ourselves," he said.
Russia itself said on Monday that Estonia's statement that Moscow jets violated Estonian airspace was baseless and accused Tallinn of trying to increase East-West tensions.
Regarding the incident in Poland, Russia said its drone had launched a massive offensive against military facilities in western Ukraine that night, but had no plans to strike targets in Poland.
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)
[SRC] https://voi.id/en/news/517605
