Two Russian military fighter planes and a spy plane were intercepted by British and German warplanes over the Baltic Sea. The Russian aircraft, two Sukhoi Su-27
fighter planes and an Ilyushin Il-20 spy plane, were flying without transponder signals in international airspace when the Eurofighter jets were deployed to identify them.
Although encounters with Russian military aircraft are not unusual in the region due to the regular flights between mainland Russia and Kaliningrad, NATO allies are responsible for protecting the airspace of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Germany recently handed over the responsibility for NATO’s Baltic air policing mission to Britain. In September 2023, a Russian squadron buzzed an RAF surveillance aircraft near the Russian-occupied Crimea peninsula.
The British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace accused the Russian jets of flying recklessly close and of releasing a missile in the vicinity, but the Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, blamed a technical malfunction. Wallace eventually accepted the explanation and ended the incident. Photo by Alex Beltyukov - RuSpotters Team, Wikimedia commons.
