Russia has responded to NATO naval wargames in the Baltic Sea by sending a dozen combat jets to embark on practice strikes on marine targets in the area, its military confirmed.
The move comes just a day after NATO kicked off its annual military exercises in the Sea, in what will have been interpreted as a warning to Putin's forces stationed nearby.
And it appears Putin got the memo, after Russia's Baltic Fleet revealed in a statement that a dozen of its Su-24, Su-27 and Su-30 aircrafts practised the strikes on Thursday.
Relationships between Russia and the West have become increasingly fraught over the years, including after Russia seized the Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and following Moscow's support for a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine.
Moscow has also repeatedly voiced concern over the deployment of NATO forces near Russian borders, describing it as a threat to its security. Russia and the alliance have also blamed each other for conducting destabilising military exercises near borders.
The US and NATO allies have repeatedly said that Russian fighter jets have performed unsafe maneuvers while shadowing their planes - accusations that the Russian military has rejected.
The NATO exercises will see twenty eight ships and aircraft from 19 countries take part in ten days of exercises along with 3,000 personnel, which are designed to test their ability to work together to combat threats.
Included will be forces from the UK, US, France and Germany - but also Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which are considered the most vulnerable to the threat of Russian invasion.
No comments:
Post a Comment