NATO intercepted Russian strategic bombers and fighter jets over the Baltic Sea on Monday, sending French Rafale fighters up from a Lithuanian air base where they are stationed for the alliance’s Baltic air-policing mission.
Two Rafales took off from Šiauliai Air Base after crews were put on standby, joining jets from Sweden, Finland, Poland, Denmark and Romania as they moved to identify the Russian formation. The Russian mission included two supersonic Tu-22M3 bombers and about 10 fighters, including SU-30s and SU-35s.
The French aircraft were armed with air-to-air missiles, underscoring how quickly NATO can move when Russian military flights appear near its borders. An journalist saw the response from Šiauliai, where the French detachment is using the base during a four-month deployment.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the bombers’ flight was scheduled, lasted more than four hours and took place over the neutral waters of the Baltic Sea. It said long-range bombers were accompanied by fighters of foreign states at certain stages of the route, and added that Russian crews regularly fly over the Arctic, the North Atlantic, the Pacific Ocean and the Baltic and Black seas in strict compliance with international airspace rules.
The encounter fits a pattern NATO has lived with for years. The alliance routinely scrambles fighters to intercept Russian warplanes that approach or fly near its airspace, and says the planes often do not use transponders, file a flight plan or communicate with controllers. NATO’s Baltic air-policing mission has been in place since Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia joined the alliance in 2004, and even before the war in Ukraine the alliance was intercepting Russian planes around 300 times a year, mostly over waters around northern Europe.
The Russian flight also came after January, when NATO jets responded to Russian strategic bombers over the Baltic Sea, and after at least four similar Russian bomber flights over the Baltic last year. The area around the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad has remained one of the most watched stretches of sky and sea, alongside concerns over alleged sabotage of underwater cables in the Baltic Sea in recent years. The next test for NATO is whether these intercepts stay routine — or become part of a wider contest over the region’s air and sea lanes.