NATO jets scramble to intercept Russian spy plane over Baltic Sea in latest dogfight between Moscow and the West

NATO fighter jets were sent yesterday to intercept a Russian reconnaissance plane that violated Swedish airspace in the Baltic Sea.

The Ilyushin Il-20 Electronic Signals Intelligence (ELINT) aircraft was detected breaking into the Swedish flight information region close to the island of Gotland, which is widely considered to be the most strategic location in the Baltic Sea.

A pair of Eurofighter Typhoon jets scrambled from an airbase near the German city of Laage to meet the Il-20, which NATO Air Command said did not respond to requests for identification.

Codenamed ‘Coot-A’ by NATO, the Il-20 ELINT aircraft is packed with radar arrays and sensors designed to gather intelligence and help other aircraft and armed forces identify key vulnerabilities in their adversaries’ defense networks.

Germany’s air force, the Luftwaffe, shared disturbing images of the fighter jets closely flanking the Russian plane.

‘A dispatch by our alert squadron of Tactical Air Force Wing 71”Richthofen” out of Laage. Together with our (Swedish) partners, we checked a (Russian) reconnaissance plane on Gotland,’ read a post from the Luftwaffe.

NATO Air Command later shared an update saying Italian Eurofighters were also involved in escorting the Il-20.

Russia’s air force regularly conducts sorties that see its aircraft enter the flight information region (FIR) of NATO countries without entering the airspace proper.

Unlike an unauthorized violation of a country’s airspace – which would be perceived as a direct violation of its sovereignty – a violation of the FIR is seen as a less serious but still alarming violation of airspace rules.

But the Russian spy plane’s flight path close to Gotland will be seen as further cause for concern given the island’s importance.

Described by analysts and commentators as a ‘giant aircraft carrier’, Stockholm-administered Gotland lies just 120 miles from the coast of NATO’s Baltic triad of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, but also just 230 miles north of the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

Its prime location offers enormous advantages in the deployment and control of air and sea traffic in the Baltic Sea, and has been regularly cited by military analysts and Russian media commentators as a highly desirable target.

Sweden maintained a military presence on Gotland during the Cold War, and at its peak housed up to 25,000 soldiers, but in 2005 it was almost completely demilitarized.

But now, with Sweden’s accession to NATO complete and amid heightened tensions with Russia, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said the prospect of re-arming Gotland was “an obvious thing to discuss with our new NATO allies” as part of a wider rearmament of Gotland. military preparedness in the Baltic Sea.

‘Anything to do with the Baltic Sea is such an obvious candidate (for deploying military resources),’ Kristersson said last month.

‘This applies in relation to presence on Gotland, but also in relation to surveillance, in relation to submarine capabilities.’

Russian military analyst and retired navy captain Vasily Dandykin told Russian news channel Sputnik that a remilitarization of Gotland would be seen as a major issue in the halls of the Kremlin.

‘The size of this island makes it possible to put aviation, airfields and naval bases… (to serve) the dream of both the NATO bloc and the Americans to turn the Baltic Sea into a NATO sea… We understand what kind of is a threat,’ said Dandykin.

“In any case, more intensive (Russian) exercises will take place in the Baltic Sea. We must understand that Finland is also already a member of NATO. Therefore, our actions will be sufficient – ​​both from Kaliningrad, where the Baltic Fleet is based, and from the rest of Russia.’

Sweden has not gone to war for more than two centuries and until recently had scaled back its military capabilities to such an extent that its population, so ill-prepared for the possibility of conflict, even developed a term for it: ‘peace damage’ or ‘peace damaged’.

Sweden’s demilitarization of Gotland in 2005 raised alarm among NATO allies, especially the Baltic states, which had only just become members of the alliance a year earlier.

War planners have long struggled to figure out how to prevent these countries from being cut off from their allies if Russian ground troops were to capture the 40-mile Suwalki Gap between Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

If the Kremlin were to gain control of Gotland as well, it would leave Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania sandwiched between mainland Russia to the east, Kaliningrad to the west and another strategic location to the north.

NATO repeatedly called on Stockholm to recognize Gotland’s strategic importance, but the government pressed ahead with its demilitarization and Sweden’s armed forces effectively abandoned their ‘giant aircraft carrier’.

Baltic fears were justified in 2013 when Russia conducted a widely condemned military exercise in which two of Moscow’s Tu-22M3 nuclear bombers, along with an escort of Su-27 fighter jets, performed dummy bombing maneuvers that brought their wings within just 24 miles of the island.

This shock prompted Stockholm to once again embark on a program of steady rearmament, but it was not until Russian tanks and warplanes tore up the Ukrainian border on 24 February 2022 that the militarization of Gotland took off.

The invasion of Ukraine represented a watershed moment in Swedish foreign policy, prompting the government to abandon its two-century-long policy of military neutrality and non-alignment and submit an application to join NATO.

Two years later, Sweden‘s flag was raised at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Monday, cementing the Nordic country’s place as the 32nd member of the security bloc.