Fighter jets from the German and British air forces have been deployed to intercept a Russian aircraft near Estonian airspace, the British Ministry of Defense announced on Wednesday.
The two countries are conducting joint police missions in Estonian airspace as part of NATO’s efforts to strengthen security on the eastern flank in response to Russia.
Typhoon fighter jets responded on Tuesday after a Russian refueling aircraft failed to communicate with Estonian air traffic control, the British ministry said.
The Russian plane failed to enter the airspace of Estonia, a NATO member state.
Germany and the United Kingdom are part of the NATO air policing mission in the Baltic Sea until the end of April.
“It was great to see the British and German elements operating as a team,” said British Air Force Commander Scott Maccoll.
“This joint British-German mission clearly demonstrates our shared determination to deal with any potential threat to NATO’s borders, and demonstrates our combined strength”in turn, said UK Armed Forces Minister James Heappey.
These interceptions are routine – even before Russia invaded Ukraine last February – with NATO aircraft involved in about 400 interceptions per year involving Russian aircraft.
But this new incident comes in a context of high tension following the collision of a Russian warplane with a US drone that self-destructed in the Black Sea on Tuesday.
Washington and Moscow presented different versions of what happened.
The United States claimed that the Russian plane hit a propeller of the ‘drone’, while Russia defended that the plane crashed after a “sudden maneuver”.
“The US MQ-9 Reaper drone incident caused by Russia in the Black Sea is a sign of [que o Presidente russo, Vladimir]”Putin is ready to expand the conflict zone and involve other parties,” Ukraine’s Security Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said in a message released today via the social network Twitter.
It was the first time since the Cold War that a US plane was shot down after encountering a Russian warplane, a situation that highlighted the risk of confrontation between Russia and the West in the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine.
The Russian military offensive on Ukrainian territory, launched on February 24 last year, plunged Europe into what is considered the most serious security crisis since World War II (1939-1945).
Source: DN
