Siauliai Air Base, Lithuania — NATO intercepted Russian strategic bombers and fighter jets flying over the Baltic Sea on Monday, a powerful display of air power on the alliance’s eastern flank, away from the Middle East spotlight.
French rafale fighter plane Was deployed from a Lithuanian air base where they have been deployed for decades nato Air-policing efforts. The fighter planes equipped with air-to-air missiles included jets from Sweden, Finland, Poland, Denmark and Romania. The French contingent said, they all took to the sky to observe and keep an eye on the Russian flight.
According to the statement, the Russian mission included two supersonic Tu-22M3s, as well as about 10 fighters – both SU-30s and SU-35s – which took turns protecting the large strategic bombers.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the flight of the long-range bombers was scheduled and took place in airspace over the neutral waters of the Baltic Sea. The ministry said on Telegram on Monday that the flight took more than four hours.
“On some stages of the route, long-range bombers were accompanied by fighters from foreign states,” the ministry said. “Crews of long-range aviation regularly conduct flights over the neutral waters of the Arctic, North Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, as well as the Baltic and Black Seas. All flights of aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Force are carried out in strict compliance with international rules for the use of airspace.”
The ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. It frequently reports flights of its strategic bombers over the Baltic Sea, including in January – when NATO jets also flew to meet them – and at least four times last year.
NATO’s Allied Air Command also did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
The military alliance regularly uses fighter planes to intercept Russian warplanes approaching or flying near NATO airspace. NATO says the Russian planes it intercepts often fail to use their transponders and do not communicate with air traffic controllers or file flight plans. NATO jets are sent overhead to identify them.
Many of the Russian flights that NATO monitors with its Baltic Air Policing Mission since Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia joined the alliance in 2004 fly to and from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Even before the war in Ukraine, NATO was intercepting Russian aircraft about 300 times each year, mostly in the waters around Northern Europe.
An Associated Press journalist watched the French troop response from the vast Siauliai Air Base in Lithuania on Monday. NATO uses the base for combat patrols that monitor the skies over the alliance’s eastern flank.
The two-man crew of two French Rafale fighter jets – a pilot and a navigator – were seen rushing in two vans from the headquarters to the aircraft hangar used by the French contingent during their four-month deployment at the airport.
The crews were already prepared as they were on standby, so if a scramble occurred they would be ready to take to the air within minutes.
Both crews immediately took their positions in the cockpits of their planes. They were then stopped, the planes’ jet engines ignited, until they received the order to take off. Then they came out of their hangar and started roaring into the clear sky.
Monday’s flight was the latest in Russia’s maneuvers over the Baltic Sea.
Lithuania’s Defense Ministry said that from 13–19 April NATO jets were dispatched four times to intercept Russian aircraft that violated flight rules including turning off flight transponders and taking off without a flight plan.
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Stephanie Dazio in Berlin and Kostya Manenkov in Tallin, Estonia contributed to this report.
