Baltic drone spillover gives Belarus a narrow opening
Drone incursions are pushing NATO’s Baltic flank toward a risk-reduction channel; the only workable backdoor, for now, runs through Belarus.
The latest wave of drone alarms in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia is producing a simple power shift: Moscow can keep raising the cost of confusion, while the Baltics can only reduce it by building a channel that does not require trust, only procedure. In an opinion piece for 
Al Jazeera, Yauheni Preiherman argues that Russian electronic warfare is diverting Ukrainian drones into NATO airspace and that the answer is a depoliticized military-to-military mechanism involving the Baltic states, Poland and Belarus. That is not a peace plan. It is a damage-control plan for a war that is already spilling sideways. For the wider regional picture, see 
Global Politics and Conflict.
The leverage problem
The Baltics have the most to lose because they sit on the seam between NATO and the Russia-Belarus military space, with no buffer and little room for error. Bloomberg reported on May 26 that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for unified alert systems and better cross-border coordination after the drone incidents exposed gaps in Europe’s defenses (
Bloomberg). That matters because the current escalation is not being driven by armor crossing borders; it is being driven by misread signals, public accusations and rapid military responses to drones that may have been diverted rather than launched at the Baltics themselves.
The region’s immediate losers are the Baltic governments, which are being forced to spend political capital reassuring their publics and their allies while also avoiding an overreaction that could widen the crisis. The winners, at least tactically, are the actors who thrive in ambiguity: Russia, because it can probe NATO’s response time; and Belarus, because it can present itself as a conduit rather than a belligerent. That is why Preiherman’s point is not about Belarus’s virtue. It is about Belarus’s utility.
Why Belarus is useful
Preiherman’s argument is that a formal NATO-Russia arrangement is not realistic now, so the next best thing is a de facto channel built on existing bilateral confidence-building agreements that Belarus already has with Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland (Al Jazeera). The key detail is that those agreements were never fully withdrawn, only left dormant after 2020. That gives the region a legal and bureaucratic shortcut: revive the channels, keep the discussion military, and use them to share drone-track information before an incident becomes a headline.
There is some evidence this is not fantasy. According to 
ERR, the Belarusian military has already used communication channels to pass information on incoming third-country drones to Polish and Baltic counterparts, and officials publicly acknowledged the practical value. That is the real opening here: not a grand bargain with Minsk, but a limited technical arrangement that lowers the odds of a NATO-Belarus misunderstanding. For policymakers, that is often the only kind of mechanism available before a crisis hardens.
What to watch next
The next decision point is whether the Baltics and Poland quietly reciprocate those information-sharing channels with Belarus, or whether they leave the field to ad hoc air alerts and alliance statements. NATO is already signaling calm, proportionate management of the drone issue; EFE reported on May 21 that Secretary-General Mark Rutte dismissed Russian claims as “ridiculous” while warning against escalation (
EFE). That posture buys time, but not safety.
The immediate test is practical: can regional militaries agree on incident procedures before the next drone crosses the border? If not, the Baltics will keep importing the war in the form of alarms, evacuations and scrambled jets. If yes, Belarus becomes less of an ally of Moscow than a reluctant buffer against a mistake both sides want to avoid.
