Finland’s military intelligence has warned that the risk of drones drifting into the country due to the ongoing war in Ukraine is increasing.

The Chief of Finnish Defence Intelligence, Major General Pekka Turunen, disclosed this in an interview with AFP ahead of the release of Finland’s latest military intelligence report on Thursday. Finland shares a 1,340-kilometre border with Russia.

According to Turunen, one of the growing security concerns identified in the report is the possibility of long-range drones unintentionally entering Finnish airspace or territory.

The risk of a drone drifting into Finnish airspace or onto Finnish territory is growing all the time, the more Ukraine strikes in this area near the Gulf of Finland, he said.

He explained that Ukraine has been targeting Russian oil ports located close to Finland, while Russia has been responding by deploying GPS jamming systems. As a result, drones that rely on GPS navigation could be diverted from their intended targets and end up elsewhere.

“Ukraine has been targeting these oil ports quite close to Finland, and now we know how Russia is countering them by using GPS jamming. So if a drone was using GPS for navigation, it could be diverted somewhere else,” Turunen added.

He noted, however, that no such incidents had been recorded in Finland so far.

Finland’s overall security situation has worsened since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, although the intelligence agency said conditions have not changed significantly compared to the past year.

Following the invasion, Finland ended decades of military non-alignment and joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in April 2023.

Turunen also suggested that recent political tensions linked to comments by US President Donald Trump about Greenland may have encouraged Russia to act more freely, as international attention shifted away from Ukraine.

“At least on a political level, it has probably had an encouraging effect on Russia,” he said, adding that Moscow may see divisions within the West, NATO, and Europe as signs of weakness.

The comments were made before Trump announced on Wednesday that he was scrapping proposed tariffs against Europe and ruling out military action to take Greenland from Denmark.