Finland warned the public of drones possibly entering its airspace, for the first time near Helsinki, in the early hours of Friday.
Flights were disrupted at the country’s biggest airport, Helsinki-Vantaa, and about 1.8 million residents of southern Finland were told to remain indoors after overnight Ukrainian strikes on Russia near Finland prompted concern that unmanned aircraft had strayed into the country.
The emergency warning was issued at 3:49 a.m. local time and lifted about three hours later.
Authorities have “no information or observations” indicating that drones actually entered Finnish territory, Kari Nisula, operations chief of the Finnish Defense Forces, said at a news conference on Friday. He said the drones involved were believed to be larger models that are easier to detect.
The Russian Ministry of Defense reported that 355 Ukrainian UAVs were shot down over regions of the country. The northernmost region they mentioned in the drone report was Pskov, which borders Estonia and Latvia, but not Finland.
A drone warning was also issued in the eastern region of Latvia in the early hours of Friday, but no drones have so far been reported coming into the country.
While there is no direct military threat against Finland, the Defense Forces raised their readiness level and scrambled fighter jets. Authorities initially said a drone was expected to be heading toward an area between Helsinki and Porvoo, home to assets including Neste Oyj’s oil refinery on the south coast.
Air traffic at Helsinki-Vantaa airport and shipping traffic in the Gulf of Finland were rerouted temporarily. Some flights arriving from Asia were diverted to airports in the northern town of Rovaniemi and Stockholm.
Ukrainian drones have strayed into Finnish territory in recent weeks during attacks on Russian oil refineries near its borders, but none have previously affected the capital city region.
Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said drones could continue to divert into Finnish territory also in the future, saying such situations are “in no way acceptable.”
Finns have criticized the authorities’ communication and the military’s ability to detect the drones, and the incidents have caused widespread public concern.
On Friday, Finland’s 112 emergency application, widely used by the public, experienced a technical glitch that delayed both the initial warning and the later notification that the situation had ended.
Photograph: Helsinki-Vantaa airport in 2025; photo credit: Martin Bertrand/AFP/Getty Images
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