Via a short press release, the Finnish Ministry of Defense announced that it had just opened an investigation into an alleged violation of its airspace by a Russian military aircraft, the type of which it did not specify.
According to the explanations he gave, the incident occurred on the morning of June 10, in the town of Loviisa [golfe de Finlande], located less than 100 km east of Helsinki. The Russian aircraft traveled 2.5 km over Finnish territory before turning back. This violation lasted approximately 2 minutes.
“We take this suspicion of territorial violation seriously and an investigation has been opened,” said Antti Häkkänen, the Finnish Defense Minister. “Border guards are responsible for the preliminary investigation of cases of border violations,” he said.
For its part, Finnish diplomacy contacted the Russian embassy in Helsinki to ask for an explanation on this incident.
The last violation of Finnish airspace by Russian military aircraft dates back to August 2022. At the time, Finnish military authorities specified that two MiG-31 “Foxhound” had been spotted near the coastal town of Porvoo , located halfway between Helsinki and Loviisa. An F/A-18 Hornet of the Suomen ilmavoimat [force aérienne finlandaise, ndlr] had taken off on alert to identify them. A priori, nothing of the sort happened in the case currently under investigation.
Several Russian military planes were on mission in the region during the day of June 10. Thus, the Russian Ministry of Defense indicated that several Tu-95MS and Tu-22M3 strategic bombers, accompanied by Su-30SM, Su-27 and Su-33 combat aircraft, had flown over the “neutral waters of the Barents Sea , the Norwegian Sea and the Baltic Sea”, during a mission lasting six hours.
“On certain parts of their route, the Russian planes were escorted by combat planes from Western states,” the ministry said.
But it is possible that the plane suspected of having violated Finnish airspace was among those which were intercepted, at the request of the Combined Air Operations Center in Uedem, by German Eurofighter EF-2000s, currently deployed in Lielvarde [Lettonie], under NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission. Two photographs, released early in the afternoon of June 10 by the Luftwaffe, show two Su-27 “Flanker” escorting an Il-20 “Coot” electronic intelligence plane. These Russian aircraft were flying without a flight plan and without a transponder.
In one of the two photos, we can see another plane, which appears to be a transport device. But the resolution is too weak to be positive.
Regardless, this alleged violation of the airspace of Finland, now a NATO member, occurred just over weeks after a draft resolution was tabled by the Russian Ministry of Defense. Defense with a view to “updating the coordinates of the Russian borders in the Baltic Sea”.
Photo: Il-20 “Coot”, for illustration – By Kirill Naumenko — CC BY-SA 3.0
