Use Ukraine's counter drone expertise to protect NATO's borders, Lithuania says

By John Irish

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -Ukraine should be fully integrated into plans for a "drone wall" to protect NATO's borders because it has the experience and know-how to be able to do it, Lithuania's foreign minister said on Monday. 

The EU is looking at how to create a "drone wall" along the EU's eastern border - a project infused with urgency by a Russian drone incursion into Poland.

Analysts and officials said the incursion exposed gaps in Europe's and NATO's ability to protect against drones, although Polish and NATO forces shot down several of them, albeit using expensive air defence systems and warplanes. 

"We have big holes in our EU defense. We lack the right equipment that would allow us to detect drones, to follow them, to track them, and then to destroy them. We lack it," Kestutis Budrys told Reuters on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

Budrys said Ukraine was fighting back drones every night and had the integrated systems to counter drones.

"We have to bring this technology to the front line and to build it there, build it there so that it will be effective together with Ukrainians," Budrys said.

Speaking on Russian incursions into NATO air space, Budrys said Moscow was using the alliance's hesitations and debate on how to respond to expand the grey zones.

"We have to also very clearly articulate and show to Russia that further escalation from their side will bring a harsher response," he said. 

Those comments echoed Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, who earlier at the United Nations warned Russia not to "come here to whine about it" if a plane or missile was shot down next time they entered Polish air space.

Michael Waltz, the new U.S. envoy to the United Nations, told a Security Council meeting last week to discuss accusations of a Russian airspace violation that the United States and its allies would defend every inch of the NATO military alliance's territory.

SANCTIONS

When asked about the United States pressuring Europe to be tougher on sanctions over Russia's hydrocarbons sector, while holding off on imposing its own sanctions, Budrys said Washington had a point.

"We have to look into the mirror," he said. "The fact that some of the European nations increased imports last year from Russia of LNG, this is not only shameful, this is dangerous, because this is how we are supplying Russia's war machine," he said, adding that putting sanctions on Russian energy firms like Gazprom and Novatek would make the bloc more credible. 

Once it had put its own house in order then it would be easier to have a proper coordinated strategy with the United States, he said.     

"Without the United States and without coordination with the United States, European sanctions are weak. When we have the United States in the front and pulling all the train, it works," he said. 

The bloc is currently studying a 19th package of Russian sanctions that would include a phasing out of European LNG purchases by 2027.

(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Stephen Coates)