Design and capabilities
Chaika, Ukrainian for "seagull," is a fixed-wing decoy drone with a wingspan of roughly 2.5 metres, built from cheaper components than Ukraine's AN-196 Liutyi long-range strike drone, which it closely resembles in silhouette when airborne. Former Finnish Defence Forces research director Jyri Kosola estimated its range at around 750 kilometres, well short of the AN-196's reported 1,000 to 2,000 kilometres. The two types are distinguished mainly by size and wing geometry - differences visible only on close inspection of wreckage or high-resolution imagery - which makes real-time visual identification during an airspace incident genuinely difficult, even for experienced pilots.
Operational history
On 29 March 2026, two drones crashed in southeastern Finland near Kouvola, in the Kymenlaakso region roughly 70 kilometres from the Russian border. An F/A-18 Hornet pilot initially identified one visually as a Ukrainian AN-196 Liutyi; President Alexander Stubb and Prime Minister Petteri Orpo confirmed Ukrainian origin for at least one drone, and one carried an unexploded warhead that was destroyed in a controlled detonation. Ukraine apologised and said no drones had been directed at Finland, attributing the deviation to Russian electronic interference. In mid-April 2026, retired engineer colonel Jyri Kosola, formerly the Finnish Defence Forces' research director, told Yle that wreckage photographs did not match the AN-196 and instead resembled the smaller Chaika. Finland's National Bureau of Investigation subsequently confirmed to Yle that the recovered drones were a different, smaller model than first reported - the NBI's confirmation was of the size discrepancy, not a formal naming of the model as Chaika specifically. Because a 750-kilometre-range Chaika could not have flown directly from Ukrainian territory to Kouvola, Kosola has suggested - as his own analysis, not an official finding - that the drone may have been moved into Belarusian or Russian territory before launch.
AirVeto context
The Kouvola incident is a confirmed EU-airspace case and illustrates a recurring identification problem AirVeto readers should watch for: decoy types built to resemble larger strike drones can be misclassified by military spotters and open-source analysts alike in the hours, or even weeks, after a crash. The correction away from AN-196 is itself the more significant story here, since it changes both the assessed threat level of the incident and the plausible launch geography behind it - read "Chaika" as Kosola's expert assessment, not as the NBI's own official model name.