Russia said on Monday that it had taken off one of its warplanes to meet two military planes, French and German, over the Baltic Sea, which it said were going to “violate the Russian border”.
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“After the foreign military planes turned back (…), the Russian fighter returned safely to the airfield,” the Russian Defense Ministry said on Telegram.
According to the ministry, the two devices in question are a P-3C Orion patrol boat from the German navy and an Atlantique 2 anti-submarine surveillance device from the French navy.
The Russian border was not violated, he said.
“The flight of the Russian fighter took place in strict compliance with international rules for the use of airspace over neutral waters without crossing air routes and coming dangerously close to a foreign aircraft”, added assured the Russian ministry.
Incidents involving Russian planes and aircraft from NATO countries have increased in recent years, even before the start of the conflict in Ukraine.
At the beginning of May, it was a Polish border guard plane operating in the Black Sea on behalf of the European external borders agency Frontex which, according to Warsaw, was endangered by the approaches of a Russian fighter.
In April, a Russian fighter intercepted a German navy plane approaching the Russian border in the Baltic Sea.
A month earlier, Russian fighters had gone to meet an American Reaper MQ-9 drone in the Black Sea, which after their maneuvers had crashed into the sea. The incident had caused a bout of tension between Washington and Moscow .