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French fighter jets intercepted 11 Russian aircraft over the past week as part of a NATO Air Policing mission along the alliance’s eastern flank, a spokesperson for France’s armed forces said on Thursday.
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In an update on French military operations, Colonel Guillaume Vernet said French Rafale jets had been scrambled from Lithuania on multiple occasions to intercept Russian planes “operating without flight plans or radio contact”.
The intercepted Russian aircraft included transport planes such as the Ilyushin Il-18 and Antonov An-12, as well as fighter jets and reconnaissance aircraft like the Sukhoi Su-24 and Antonov An-30.
On Tuesday, French forces operating out of Lithuania’s Šiauliai Air Base scrambled to intercept six Russian aircraft “operating within the Baltic Area of Responsibility,” NATO Air Command said.
French aircrews are currently stationed in the region as part of NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission, a four-month rotational responsibility that aims to protect the Baltic states’ airspace. NATO has been bolstering its eastern border since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The interceptions come after a series of drone incursions into Baltic airspace across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in recent weeks.
A Russian drone carrying explosives also crashed in the Romanian city of Galați last week, causing a fire on the roof of a residential apartment block and injuring two people.
Moscow has accused the Baltic countries of allowing Ukraine to use their airspace to carry out attacks on Russian soil.
The Baltic governments have denied this, saying they “firmly reject Russia’s blatant disinformation campaign and false claims”.
“The Nordic-Baltic countries have never allowed their territory or airspace to be used for these attacks against targets in Russia,” they said in a joint statement.
