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 japanese 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 preserve watch on the Russian flight, the French detachment mentioned.
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 mentioned 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 mentioned Monday on Telegram.
“At certain stages of the route, the long-range bombers were accompanied by fighters of foreign states,” the ministry mentioned. “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.”
AP 
The ministry didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon Tuesday. It usually stories 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 very least 4 instances final 12 months.
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 planes 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 Ukraine, NATO was intercepting Russian planes round 300 instances annually, largely 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 japanese flank.
Etat-Major des Armees by way of AP 
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’d be prepared to take to the air inside minutes if scrambled.
The two crews shortly took their locations of their planes’ cockpits. They had been then placed on maintain, with the planes’ jet engines ignited, till they acquired 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 few years, there have been a number of incidents of alleged Russian sabotage of underwater cables within the sea.
Lithuania’s protection ministry mentioned NATO jets had been scrambled 4 instances from April 13-19 to intercept Russian plane that violated flight guidelines that included turning off flight transponders and flying with no 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 it had dispatched two of its fighter jets to intercept a Russian IL-20 Coot reconnaissance aircraft, and two days later, the jets intercepted an unknown plane leaving Kaliningrad air house.
U.S. and Russian plane have had shut calls within the area over the years. In 2018, a Russian fighter jet intercepted a U.S. Navy spy aircraft over worldwide airspace above the Baltic Sea in what the European Command is describing as a secure intercept — despite the fact that the plane got here inside 20 toes of one another. In 2017, an armed Russian jet got here within five feet of a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft over the Baltic Sea.
