NATO forces intercepted Russian strategic bombers and fighter jets over the Baltic Sea on Monday, in a potent show of air power on the alliance’s eastern flank, diverting attention from the Middle East.
French Rafale fighters, stationed at a Lithuanian air base for NATO’s long-standing air-policing mission, were scrambled.
Armed with air-to-air missiles, they joined aircraft from Sweden, Finland, Poland, Denmark, and Romania, all tasked with monitoring the Russian formation, the French detachment confirmed.
The Russian formation comprised two supersonic Tu-22M3 bombers and approximately 10 fighters (SU-30s and SU-35s) that alternately escorted the larger aircraft, the statement detailed.
Russia’s Defense Ministry stated the long-range bombers’ flight was scheduled, occurring in neutral Baltic Sea airspace and lasting over four hours, as reported Monday on Telegram.
The ministry noted: “At certain stages of the route, the long-range bombers were accompanied by fighters of foreign states.”
It further asserted: “Crews of long-range aviation regularly conduct flights over the neutral waters of the Arctic, the North Atlantic, the Pacific Ocean, as well as the Baltic and Black Seas. All flights of Russian Aerospace Forces aircraft 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. Such flights are frequently reported by Moscow, including in January – when NATO jets also intercepted them – and at least four times last year.
NATO’s Allied Air Command also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
The military alliance routinely scrambles fighter aircraft to intercept Russian warplanes that approach or fly near NATO airspace. NATO says the Russian planes it intercepts often fail to use their transponders and don’t communicate with air traffic controllers or file a flight plan. NATO jets are sent up to identify them.
Many of the Russian flights that NATO monitors with its Baltic air policing mission, in place since Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia joined the alliance in 2004, are to and from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Even before the war in Ukraine, NATO was intercepting Russian planes around 300 times each year, mostly over waters around northern Europe.
A journalist from The Associated Press witnessed the French detachment’s response on Monday from the sprawling Šiauliai Air Base in Lithuania. NATO uses the base for fighter patrols that police the skies on the alliance’s eastern flank.
Two French Rafale fighter jets’ two-man crews — a pilot and a navigator — were seen racing in two vans to the planes’ hangars from the headquarters building the French detachment uses during its four-month deployment on the air base.
The crews were already suited up because they’d been on standby, so they would be ready to take to the air within minutes if scrambled.
The two crews quickly took their places in their planes’ cockpits. They were then put on hold, with the planes’ jet engines ignited, until they got the order to take off. Then they taxied out of their hangars and roared off into the clear skies.
Monday’s flight was the latest in Russia’s maneuvers over the Baltic Sea.
Lithuania’s defense ministry said NATO jets were scrambled four times from April 13-19 to intercept Russian aircraft that violated flight rules that included turning off flight transponders and flying without a flight plan.
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