Anne Kolanin
HELSINKI, March 30 (Reuters) – Finnish police said on Monday that a Ukrainian drone that crashed in Finland on Sunday was carrying an unexploded warhead, according to a preliminary assessment.
Ukraine said it had apologized for the incident and said the drone launched during its war with Russia went astray, likely due to electronic interference from Moscow.
No casualties were reported in the crash in southeastern Finland, the first time the Russian-Ukrainian war has spilled onto Finnish soil.
Police investigating second drone
In recent weeks, Ukraine has stepped up drone attacks on Russian refineries and export routes, some close to Russia's border with Finland, in an attempt to cripple Moscow's wartime economy.
“A preliminary assessment by the authorities found that the drone that landed in northern Kouvola carried an unexploded warhead,” Finnish police said in a statement.
It was identified as a Ukrainian AN-196 drone with a wingspan of 6.7 meters (22 feet) and was destroyed in a controlled explosion.
Police added that the wreckage of a second drone, also believed to be Ukrainian, was found in the city of Lumaki, east of the town of Kouvola, and that police were investigating whether the drone exploded when it crashed.
A spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said: “We can confirm that under no circumstances did any Ukrainian drones target Finland… We have apologized to Finland for this incident.”
Finnish President Alexander Stuab and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky discussed the incident in a phone call on Monday.
“Alex and I view the situation in the same way. We are sharing all necessary information,” Zelensky wrote on social media.
Zelensky said on Monday that some of Ukraine's allies had sent a “signal” to Kyiv about the possibility of scaling back long-range attacks on Russia's oil industry amid soaring global energy prices.
Stuab did not ask Ukraine to reduce its strikes on Russian assets near Finland during the call with Zelensky, his office told Reuters. “This issue has not been discussed between the presidents,” it said in an emailed statement.
(Reporting by Anne Kauranen in Helsinki, Pavel Polityuk and Yuliia Dysa in Kyiv; Editing by Stine Jacobsen and Andrew Heavens)
