NATO deploys armed fighter jets to intercept Russian military plans flying over Baltic Sea

NATO intercepted Russian strategic bombers and fighter jets that flew over the Baltic Sea on Monday, a muscular show of air energy on the alliance’s jap flank away from the highlight on the Middle East.

French Rafale fighters had been deployed from a Lithuanian air base the place they’re stationed as a part of a decades-long NATO air-policing effort. The fighters armed with air-to-air missiles joined jets from Sweden, Finland, Poland, Denmark and Romania. They all took to the skies to examine and maintain watch on the Russian flight, the French detachment stated.

The Russian mission included two supersonic Tu-22M3s, in addition to about 10 fighters — each SU-30s and SU-35s — that took turns escorting the bigger strategic bombers, in accordance to the assertion.

The Russian Defense Ministry stated the long-range bombers’ flight was scheduled and occurred in airspace over the impartial waters of the Baltic Sea. The flight took greater than 4 hours, the ministry stated Monday on Telegram.

“At certain stages of the route, the long-range bombers were accompanied by fighters from foreign states,” the ministry stated. “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 didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon Tuesday. It usually reviews flights by its strategic bombers over the Baltic Sea, together with in January — when NATO jets additionally flew up to meet them — and at the least 4 occasions final yr.

NATO’s Allied Air Command additionally didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon Tuesday.

The military alliance routinely scrambles fighter plane to intercept Russian warplanes that method or fly close to NATO airspace. NATO says the Russian plans it intercepts usually fail to use their transponders and do not talk with air site visitors controllers or file a flight plan. NATO jets are despatched up to determine them.

Many of the Russian flights that NATO displays 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 earlier than the war in UkraineNATO was intercepting Russian plans round 300 occasions annually, principally over waters round 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 makes use of the bottom for fighter patrols that police the skies on the alliance’s jap flank.

Two French Rafale fighter jets’ two-man crews — a pilot and a navigator — had been seen racing in two vans to the planes’ hangars from the headquarters constructing the French detachment makes use of throughout its four-month deployment on the air base.

The crews had been already suited up as a result of they’d been on standby, so they might be prepared to take to the air inside minutes if scrambled.

The two crews rapidly took their locations of their plans’ cockpits. They had been then placed on maintain, with the planes’ jet engines ignited, till they bought the order to take off. Then they taxied out of their hangars and roared off into the clear skies.

Monday’s flight was the newest in Russia’s maneuvers over — and underneath — the Baltic Sea. Over the previous couple of years, there have been a number of incidents of alleged Russian sabotage of underwater cables within the sea.

Lithuania’s protection ministry stated NATO jets had been scrambled 4 occasions from April 13-19 to intercept Russian plane that violated flight guidelines that included turning off flight transponders and flying and not using a flight plan.

In April 2025, two Swedish fighter jets underneath NATO command were scrambled over the Baltic Sea to escort away a Russian reconnaissance aircraft that was approaching Polish airspace. That similar month, Britain said he had dispatched two of his fighter jets to intercept a Russian IL-20 Coot reconnaissance aircraft, and two days later, the jets intercepted an unknown plane leaving Kaliningrad air area.

US and Russian plane have had shut calls within the area over the years. In 2018, a Russian fighter jet intercepted a US Navy spy aircraft over worldwide airspace above the Baltic Sea in what the European Command is describing as a protected intercept — although the plane got here inside 20 ft of one another. In 2017, an armed Russian jet got here within five feet of a US reconnaissance aircraft over the Baltic Sea.