Spanish Eurofighter Typhoon fighters from NATO’s Baltic Air Police were deployed in response and patrolled the area, according to the Lithuanian armed forces.
Two Russian military aircraft entered the airspace of Lithuania, a NATO member state, this Thursday for about 18 seconds, the Lithuanian armed forces reported.
The two aircraft, a Su-30 fighter and an Il-78 refueling plane, were possibly on a refueling training mission when they breached the border at around 4pm local time, entering Lithuania from the Kaliningrad region, the armed forces said, cited by Reuters.
Spanish Eurofighter Typhoon fighters from NATO’s Baltic Air Police were deployed in response and patrolled the area, according to the same source.
This is not the first time that Russian military aircraft have entered NATO airspace for brief minutes. On September 19, Estonia reported an “unprecedented violation” by 3 MiG-31s, which entered the Baltic country’s airspace and flew there for 12 minutes. At the time, Italian F-35s were called in to deal with the incident.
A few days later, the Norwegian government revealed that Russian aircraft had already violated the country’s airspace on three occasions this year alone, on April 25th, July 24th and August 18th.
