Ukraine apologizes to Finland for crashed drones

Ukraine has issued an apology to Finland after several of its drones crashed in Finnish territory a day earlier, the Foreign Ministry in Kiev said on Monday.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi stressed that the drones had not targeted Finland deliberately.

"We can say with certainty that Ukrainian drones did not fly towards Finland under any circumstances," he told journalists in Kiev.

The most likely scenario, he said, was that the drones had been diverted from their original course by electronic jamming from Russian air defences.

Several Ukrainian drones crashed to the east of the south-eastern city of Kouvola near Finland's border with Russia on Sunday.

It came as Ukraine had been repeatedly targeting Baltic ports in Russia's western Leningrad region to disrupt Russian oil exports.

Kouvola lies around 70 kilometres from the region.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Finnish President Alexander Stubb also spoke about the incident during a phone call on Monday, according to the Ukrainian leader.

"Of course, we also discussed the drone incident that recently took place on Finnish territory," Zelensky wrote in an English-language post on X on Monday.

"Alex and I see the situation in the same way. We are sharing all necessary information."

Ukrainian drones have repeatedly strayed into the airspace of Russia's neighbours in the Baltic region and occasionally come down on their territories, most recently in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.