In Latvia last night, phones rang by themselves. Residents of the Krāslava district, in the country's south-east along the border with Belarus, received a warning through the emergency notification system - a possible threat to the airspace. Then NATO fighters scrambled. And then - silence about what actually happened.

The Latvian armed forces said that for now citizens are not being asked to take additional measures, but that if circumstances change, new instructions will follow. Of all the sentences an army can send to the phone of someone having dinner at home, this is the most unsettling - not because it says a lot, but because it says too little.

The mission guarding three countries

The fighters came from NATO's Baltic Air Policing mission, which protects the airspace of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The military stressed that coordination with allies is constant and that defence of the eastern border has been reinforced in recent months. Nobody has said what exactly triggered the alert, nor has it been confirmed whether anything actually entered Latvian airspace.

This is not the first time this year. NATO shot down a foreign drone over Latvia on 8 June, and again on 14 August - for the second case the authorities blamed "effects of Russian electronic warfare". Last week an Italian NATO fighter downed a drone that had entered Lithuanian airspace from Belarus; according to reports it was a Russian Gerbera, possibly carrying explosives.

Why this is not distant news

Latvia is far from Skopje geographically, but institutionally it is much closer. The same alliance scrambling those fighters is the alliance Macedonia has belonged to since 2020. When a response is rehearsed on the Baltic's eastern border, what is being rehearsed is a procedure that applies to the whole of the alliance's airspace, ours included.

And here comes the uncomfortable part. The Latvian military itself acknowledges that while Russia's war against Ukraine continues, further incursions into the airspace are possible. So this is not an incident closed by a statement - this is a recurring condition. How many times does the phone of a Krāslava resident have to ring before it stops being news and becomes ordinary life?

For now all Latvia has is a warning with no explanation and fighters in the air. Whether that is enough will be shown next time - and next time, judging by this year, is not far off.