NATO announced a record for the interception of Russian military aircraft

According to the NATO Air Force Command, in 2020, Alliance fighters flew into the sky to intercept aircraft more than 400 times, of which 350 intercepts were on Russian military aircraft.

“NATO Air Force Europe in 2020 tried over 400 times to intercept unknown aircraft approaching Alliance airspace. Almost 90 percent of these missions - about 350 - were in response to flights of Russian military aircraft, ” avia.pro is quoted as saying in a NATO report.

As the newspaper notes, the report is actually not about interceptions, but about the identification of Russian aircraft. On this basis, experts conclude that with the help of such messages "the Alliance is conducting propaganda to discredit Russia, announcing the interceptions of Russian aircraft, although the latter are not."

Commenting on the flights of Russian naval vessels near NATO airspace, the Alliance leadership calls it "alarming" that Russian military aircraft often do not transmit a transponder code indicating their location and altitude. Pilots do not submit a flight plan or contact air traffic controllers. This, according to the leadership of the Alliance, poses a potential danger to civil aircraft.

Earlier, the RF Ministry of Defense reported that this year Russian planes had to rise not for "formal", but for the actual interception of NATO warships, in order to protect the state border of the Russian Federation from illegal invasion.

For example, in October this year, an incident involving American bombers took place in the skies over the Bering Sea near the Russian border. According to the National Center for Defense Control of the Russian Federation, two American B-1B bombers of the US Air Force were detected by means of airspace control over the neutral waters of the Bering Sea. On alarm, the MiG-31 and Su-35 fighters, which are part of the air defense forces of the Eastern Military District, immediately took off. Crews of Russian fighters identified the aerial targets as two US Air Force B-1B strategic bombers and escorted them over the Bering Sea. Russian fighters forced the pilots of foreign aircraft to turn around from the state border of the Russian Federation, after which they returned to the home airfield. The National Center for Defense Management clarified that no violations of the Russian border occurred, and all flights of Russian fighters "were carried out in strict accordance with international rules for the use of airspace."