A series of Ukrainian drone incidents in Finland has handed Russia a ready-made propaganda script, one its state media and European proxies have been running with ever since.
The incidents began on March 29, when two Ukrainian drones crashed near Kouvola in southeastern Finland during Kyiv’s large-scale strike campaign against Russian oil infrastructure on the Baltic Sea, Finnish Defence Minister Antti Hakkanen confirmed. A third drone was found on April 1 on the ice of a lake near the Russian border in Parikkala. Finnish authorities confirmed all three were of Ukrainian origin, with at least one carrying an unexploded warhead that required a controlled detonation. Finland was not alone: in the days prior, Ukrainian drones had also strayed into Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian territory during the same campaign, with one striking a chimney at an Estonian power plant and another exploding in a field in Latvia’s Krāslava district. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry apologised to all affected countries, attributing the incidents to Russian electronic warfare systems jamming GPS navigation in the Gulf of Finland area – where Kyiv had been targeting the Ust-Luga and Primorsk oil terminals, Russia’s largest crude export ports on the Baltic.
That operational context is central to understanding what followed. The drone incidents did not occur in a vacuum: they were a direct consequence of Ukraine striking infrastructure that Supo describes as the financial backbone of Russia’s war effort. Russia’s response was not only military but also informational.
Finland’s Security and Intelligence Service (Supo) raised the alarm on April 2, warning that Russia was actively exploiting the drone incidents for propaganda purposes, as Yle reported. According to the agency, events were already being interpreted in Russian media in line with the Kremlin’s position.
Supo identified one claim in particular as a deliberate fabrication. “For example, contrary to the facts, it is claimed that Finland allowed drones to be launched from its territory,” the agency said. The service assessed that Russia was attempting to portray Finland as a state hostile to Russia and to divert domestic Russian attention from its failure to defend its own energy infrastructure against Ukrainian strikes.
The Gulf of Finland energy context matters here. Supo noted that oil and gas terminals in the area are critical to the Russian economy, serving as the primary source of revenue financing the war. Maintaining a reputation as a reliable energy supplier is equally important to Moscow. For both reasons, the agency said, Russia was working to conceal the consequences of Ukrainian strikes and reassure both oil-purchasing countries and its own population. Blaming Finland and other EU countries served a dual purpose: shaping the external narrative while distracting Russians from their military’s failures.
Supo added that while Finland remains outside Russia’s primary sabotage targeting, Moscow may intensify such activity across Europe in response to continued strikes on its energy sector.
The fabricated narrative did not stay abstract for long. Russia’s state media moved to operationalise it within hours of the first drone reports.
RT framed the entire Ukrainian drone campaign as terrorism from the outset, applying the Kremlin’s label directly to all Ukrainian drone operations. The outlet’s March 29 coverage stated that “the Kremlin has characterised the UAV incursions as ‘terrorist attacks'” — a label that, once attached, reframes every stray drone not as a navigation accident caused by Russian electronic warfare but as a deliberate act of violence against civilian infrastructure. RT simultaneously injected the false flag narrative, referencing Russia’s earlier accusation that Ukraine was “deliberately sending UAVs into NATO territory as part of a false flag attack, apparently with a view to pitting the Western military bloc directly against Russia”.
TASS went further. In an April 1 press review citing retired Lieutenant General Yury Netkachev, the outlet claimed: “I don’t believe those were flyaway drones. I guess this is a well-organised show of provocation in which Ukraine’s partners pretend to be unaware of Ukrainian plans to use their territory for attacks on Russia.” The same article stated as fact that “the Baltic countries have effectively been serving as a transit corridor for strikes on Russia”.
News Front, a Russian state-linked outlet that produced five separate articles on the topic during the monitoring period, published the most explicit version of the airspace claim on March 30: “The ‘stray’ Ukrainian drones testify above all that Kyiv uses Finnish airspace for attacks on Russia”—with quotation marks around “stray” signalling deliberate scepticism toward the established explanation. The outlet also ran Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s veiled threat on March 31, warning that if EU countries were providing airspace for Ukrainian operations, Russia would “be obliged to draw conclusions and take measures”. On April 7, News Front amplified Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova’s explicit warning to the Baltic states: “If these countries do not understand the warning, they will receive a “response”—labelling their governments “regimes”.
The same narratives were rapidly redistributed across a network of European pro-Kremlin proxy outlets, translated into local languages and repackaged for domestic audiences.
The Dutch outlet Frontnieuws dedicated a full article on March 30 to the claim that Baltic states were “playing with fire” by providing airspace to Ukraine, framing it as direct war participation: “The fact that NATO countries Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia allow Ukraine to use their airspace for drone attacks on the Russian Saint Petersburg region would constitute direct war participation by these states.” Those who accepted the official “stray drone” explanation were dismissed as “downright stupid”. A follow-up article on March 31 went further, declaring that NATO airspace provision to Ukraine was “no longer disputed” — presenting unverified Russian claims as established fact.
The Czech outlet Infokurýr escalated the fear narrative on April 3, describing Ukrainian drones as “essentially flying bombs exploding in EU and NATO countries” that threatened European civilians before concluding with a direct threat projection: “Will we soon see Ukrainian kamikaze drones attacking French cities?” — after noting the flight distance between Kyiv and Paris.
Slovakia’s Oral.sk published the most direct statement of the fabricated narrative on April 2: “Finland is essentially becoming a party to the conflict with Russia by allowing Ukrainian drones to fly through its airspace”—the precise claim Supo had identified as false.
The Slovenian outlet Insajder.com deployed a more subtle technique on March 31, embedding a tweet from a pro-Russian account asking, “Failed false-flag attack to blame Russia?” alongside Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s official statement — injecting the false flag narrative while maintaining a veneer of simply reporting social media reactions.
Slovakia’s Armádny Magazín amplified Zakharova’s April 7 threats in Slovak, mocking the Baltic states as “tigers” who had “freed up airspace for attacks on Russian territory and now have Ukrainian drones falling on their heads”.
Canada-based GlobalResearch, a long-monitored pro-Kremlin English-language platform, published the most extreme version of the hostility narrative on April 4, comparing modern Finland directly to its Second World War alignment with Nazi Germany and warning that “the Russian military can easily obliterate a bunch of targets from Finland to Poland”.
The speed and geographic spread of the coverage points to coordination rather than organic reporting. Within 24 hours of the March 29 incident, aligned narratives appeared in Russian, Swedish, Czech, Hungarian, Slovak, Dutch, and Slovenian outlets. Kremlin statements by Peskov and Zakharova were amplified across the network within 24 to 48 hours of their delivery, with News Front serving as the primary Russian-language distribution node.
Latvia’s Defence Ministry had already identified the broader campaign before the Finnish incidents. On March 27, Riga warned publicly that Russia had launched what it described as a “large-scale, coordinated information operation” targeting the Baltic states, pushing the false claim that they had deliberately opened their airspace to Ukrainian drones. The Institute for the Study of War confirmed on the same date that Russia was “conducting a large-scale information warfare campaign”against Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, assessing that Moscow was attempting to discredit NATO, weaken support for Ukraine, and potentially set conditions to justify future aggression.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha went a step further on March 31. Speaking alongside EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas in Kyiv, he stated that Ukrainian intelligence confirmed the drone diversions were not accidental. “I can state with certainty that in all these cases, these were entirely deliberate and targeted actions by Russia,” Sybiha said. “We have intelligence data indicating that the Russians are intentionally diverting drones toward the Baltic states in order to use these incidents for their informational and propaganda purposes,” the Kyiv Independent reported.
Supo’s conclusion aligned with that assessment. The agency noted that Russia was not only exploiting the incidents after the fact but also actively shaping the narrative to serve several simultaneous goals: concealing military failures, pressuring Finland and its neighbours, and reinforcing a domestic audience narrative that frames the war’s consequences as the West’s fault.
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