Finland’s Ministry of Defence has recently revealed that two Russian military aircraft violated the airspace of the northern European country earlier this week. The official statement was published on the MoD official website on Tuesday.
A Finnish Air Force F-18 Hornet fighter jet was scrambled in order to intercept the intruders.
The Russian response was that Tu-22M bombers escorted by Su-27 fighters (more or less the same kind of formation that staged the mock attack on Sweden some weeks ago) were flying close to the border but did not violate it.
Nevertheless it is the second incident involving Finland and Russian planes this month. On the earlier episode the Russian official statement was that the planes came close to the border due to the bad weather.
In one way or another one, this is just the last of a series of incidents involving Russian planes in the Scandinavian region.
Jacek Siminski for TheAviationist
Image Credit: coldvalentine.blogspot.com
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How did they manage to violate Finsky’s airspace (as you state in the heading) if they didn’t violate its border (as you state in the body of your post). Or does Finsky’s air space extends somehow over the border into Russia?
The official statement of the Finland’s MoD is that there was a violation spotted.
As with other countries the national airspace extends over sea. I guess the original statement was supposed to clarify that the violation did not occur along the land border with Russia, but over Finnish waters in the Gulf of Finland.