Hungary and Slovakia have not been invited to a videoconference scheduled for Friday, 26 September, discussing the European Union’s planned “drone wall” along its eastern borders. The meeting was convened by Andrius Kubilius, European Commissioner for Defence and Space.
Who will attend the conference on the “drone wall”?
Seven EU frontline countries are participating: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria. Ukraine will also join, alongside representatives from the European Commission, the European Pravda reported.
Thomas Regnier, spokesperson for the European Commission, confirmed that Hungary and Slovakia will be absent from this initial round. “We will definitely not exclude future calls, in [a] potential[lly] larger committee. But for now, only these seven frontline countries indeed [will participate], and Ukraine, of course,” he said.
Why a “drone wall”?
The initiative gained attention following European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s recent State of the Union speech, in which she highlighted the need for stronger border protection after Russian drones violated Romanian and Polish airspace. According to Politico, the urgency increased after an incident on 19 September, when three Russian military jets entered Estonian airspace for 12 minutes before being intercepted by Italian F–35 fighter jets.
Kubilius previously called for the rapid development of such a defence system, aimed at integrating drone and air defence capabilities along the EU’s eastern border. The Financial Times reported that the EU plans to rely on technologies already tested in Ukraine.
Next steps
Regnier emphasised that the current discussions will focus on assessing the member states’ interests, capabilities, and needs. “What will be discussed, member states remain, of course, in the driving seat. We will see what their interest is, how we can help them, what their capabilities are, what their needs are, and following up on this discussion, we will then decide on potential next steps,” he said.
According to Politico, President von der Leyen may propose funding options for the drone wall at an informal EU leaders’ meeting in Copenhagen on 1 October.
Hungary and Slovakia on the sidelines
Although the Commission notes that future meetings could include additional countries, the absence of Hungary and Slovakia raises questions. While neither country is part of the EU’s frontline eastern states, they could still be affected by a defensive system designed to address Russian military threats.
After a decade of letting every third-world rapist, robber, terrorist, and leech waltz into Europe, now all of a sudden borders are important and they think they’re going to scare us with fairy tales about invading Russians.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Newsflash, gomers: We already HAVE been invaded, by an enemy far worse than anything Russians could ever do to us!
Putin June 2022: “Peter the Great waged the great northern war for 21 years. It would seem that he was at war with Sweden, he took something from them. He did not take anything from them, he returned [what was Russia’s],” the Russian president said on Thursday after a visiting an exhibition dedicated to the tsar.
“APPARENTLY, IT IS ALSO OUR LOT TO RETURN [what is Russia’s] and strengthen [the country]. And if we proceed from the fact that these basic values form the basis of our existence, we will certainly succeed in solving the tasks that we face.”