The Fighter aircraft jet F-16 flew above the Baltic Sea along with the aircraft carrying Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu, but the Russian Suhoj-27 fighter intervened. Russia news media announced this, while NATO had a slightly different version of the event.
Cold war incident?
The Baltic Sea, according to Reuters, has become an area of growing tension between Moscow and the Western Military Alliance. At the beginning of the month, the Russian fighter plane Su-27 intercepted the American B-52 bomber above the Baltic as he flew to the Russian border.
The anti-aircraft defense discovered an American plane around 7 p.m. and forced it to identify itself because it was flying in a neutral airspace above the Baltic Sea near the Russian border.
This incident, the agency said, had all the features of the Cold War. The Russian Ministry of Defense's television channel depicted a footage of F-16 aircraft flying parallel to the Defense Minister's aircraft at a very short distance. Then the Russian Suhoj-27 set between two planes and leaned in so that the projectiles he was wearing were visible. The F-16, for which the Russian side did not know which country belongs to, then left that air space.
NATO claims differently
NATO announced that they were tracking three Russian planes over the Baltic, including two combat aircraft that did not respond to air control calls or requests to identify themselves.
"The usual practice stipulates that whenever an airplane approaches the NATO airspace, the Alliance, and the national air force are in the air to track these flights," NATO said, NY Times reports.
"When the NATO airplane intercepts another aircraft, it identifies it visually, keeping a safe distance all the time, and when it is over, NATO's flight departs," it was said in a statement by NATO.
It is also added that they did not have the information regarding the identity of the passengers on the airplanes.
On Thursday, the United States Army's European Command Office also published photos that were taken by the American plane. It is clear to them that it the planes were a few meters away and the distance was so small that the pilots could each other according to NY Times.
The Russians told a different story according to NY Times. They argue that the US plane dangerously approached the Russian border, which, according to the Russian Ministry Of Defense, was not the only incident in the air that day. Since the beginning of June, there have been over 35 meetings of Russian and American planes over the Baltic.
