US allies need to shoot down Russian aircraft testing NATO boundaries, Czech president warns

Czech President Petr Pavel said NATO allies may eventually need to shoot down Russian aircraft or drones probing the alliance's airspace, warning that continued restraint could be read by Moscow as weakness. Pavel, a retired general and former chair of NATO's Military Committee, made the remarks to Fox News Digital while in New York this week for the United Nations General Assembly. He said Russia is deliberately provoking allies to gauge their response, comparing it to earlier years when Russian jets tested American pilots over Syria and repeatedly entered Turkish airspace before Turkey downed a Russian warplane in 2015. "What I am afraid of is that they see a lack of will on our side to take decisive action," Pavel said, adding that Moscow "respect[s] power" and reads hesitation as weakness.

The comments followed a string of fresh airspace incidents along NATO's eastern edge. A Russian Mi-8 helicopter crossed from Kaliningrad into Poland on Wednesday, prompting Warsaw to scramble fighter jets, and Romania launched F-16s Thursday after an unidentified object entered its airspace from Ukraine. Denmark's military intelligence agency said Thursday that it expects Russian hybrid attacks on NATO members to increase in the coming months, while putting the chance of an outright Russian strike on a bordering NATO state at low but climbing.

Speaking before the U.N. General Assembly, Pavel argued that Moscow's mounting hostility threatens the wider security of Europe and cannot be ignored.

Summarized by PolitiKool from Fox News’s reporting. Read the full story at Fox News →