{"id":34909,"date":"2025-09-21T17:32:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T17:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/34909\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T17:32:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T17:32:06","slug":"trump-vows-to-defend-baltic-states-if-russia-escalates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/34909\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump vows to defend Baltic states if Russia escalates"},"content":{"rendered":"

US President Donald Trump has said he would defend Poland and the Baltic states in case of an escalation from Russia, following Moscow’s incursion into Estonia’s airspace.<\/p>\n

Asked whether he would help defend the EU members if Russia intensifies hostilities, Mr Trump told reporters: “Yeah, I would. I would.”<\/p>\n

Estonia has requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council tomorrow following Friday’s incursion.<\/p>\n

Three Russian MiG-31 fighters violated Estonian airspace over the Gulf of Finland<\/a>, triggering complaints of a dangerous new provocation from the European Union and NATO but a denial from Moscow.<\/p>\n

Italian F-35 fighters attached to NATO’s air defense support mission in the Baltic states, along with Swedish and Finnish aircraft, were scrambled to intercept the Russian jets and warn them off.<\/p>\n

“On September 22… the United Nations Security Council will convene an emergency meeting in response to Russia’s brazen violation of Estonian airspace last Friday,” a statement from the Estonian ministry said.<\/p>\n

It marks the first time in 34 years of Estonia’s membership in the UN that the EU and NATO member nation – a staunch supporter of Ukraine – has officially requested an emergency Security Council meeting.<\/p>\n

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said the violation is “part of a broader pattern of escalation by Russia, both regionally and globally”, following violations of Polish and Romanian airspace earlier this month.<\/p>\n

“This behavior requires an international response,” Mr Tsahkna said.<\/p>\n

Asked whether he had been briefed on the situation in Estonia, Mr Trump answered in the affirmative and added: “We don’t like it.”<\/p>\n

His statement came about two weeks after some 17 Russian drones violated Polish airspace, in incident Mr Trump then sought to downplay.<\/p>\n

“It could have been a mistake,” he told journalists on 11 September.<\/p>\n

Read more:
What is the ‘Suwalki Gap’ and is it NATO’s weak point?<\/a><\/p>\n

Russian military plane entered airspace over Baltic Sea, Germany’s air force says<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Germany’s air force this morning sent two Eurofighters to track a Russian IL-20m military aircraft that had entered neutral airspace over the Baltic Sea, it said, before handing the escort over to NATO partners in Sweden.<\/p>\n

“Once again, our quick reaction alert force, consisting of two Eurofighters, was tasked by NATO with investigating an unidentified aircraft without a flight plan or radio contact in international airspace,” Germany’s air force said in a statement.<\/p>\n

“It was a Russian IL-20M reconnaissance aircraft. After visual identification, we handed over escort duties for the aircraft to our Swedish NATO partners and returned to Rostock-Laage.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US President Donald Trump has said he would defend Poland and the Baltic states in case of an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34910,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-34909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}