Thread: NATO says it intercepted 19 Russian aircraft

NATO says it intercepted 19 Russian aircraft

The Washington Post
1 day ago

© AFP/Getty Images In this U.S. Navy handout, a F/A-18 Hornet strike fighter intercepts one of two Russian Tu-95 Bear long range bomber aircraft as it approached the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Nimitz…

MOSCOW — NATO said Wednesday that it had intercepted a large number of Russian aircraft flying close to European airspace in the past two days, in an “unusual” series of incidents that brought Russian bombers as far afield as Portugal.
The aircraft — at least 19 in all — offered reminders of Russian air power at a time of the worst relations between the West and Russia since the Cold War. Russian military aircraft have significantly increased their activity in Europe since the conflict in Ukraine began earlier this year, with NATO scrambling to intercept aircraft more than 100 times in 2014. But a NATO official said the scale of the latest incidents was the most provocative this year.
Over the Atlantic Ocean and the North, Black and Baltic seas, Russian bombers, fighter jets and tanker aircraft were detected flying in international airspace, NATO said. There were no incursions into national airspace, a violation of sovereignty that would have significantly amplified the seriousness of the four incidents, three of which took place on Wednesday.
“We’re raising it as an unusual level of activity,” said Lt. Col. Jay Janzen, a spokesman for NATO’s military command in Mons, Belgium. “The flights we’ve seen in the last 24 hours, the size of those flights and some of the flight plans are definitely unusual.”
U.S. officials regard the flights as a show of force by the Putin government. “It’s concerning because it’s moving in the wrong direction,” said one U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the air activity publicly. “It’s not helping to de-escalate the situation in Ukraine. It’s not helping to improve relations between NATO and Russia. It’s not helping anybody.”
Smaller-scale incidents have also increased this year, approximately tripling from the same period in 2013, Janzen said.
In at least one of the four incidents, the aircraft had switched off their transponders and had not filed flight plans with civilian air traffic controllers. That means that civilian air traffic control cannot track them, potentially creating a risk for civilian planes.
That incident took place around 3:00 a.m. in Western Europe on Wednesday, when four Tu-95 long-range strategic nuclear bombers and four Il-78 tanker aircraft flew over the Norwegian Sea. Norwegian F-16 fighter jets scrambled to intercept them. Six of the planes returned to Russia, but two of the bombers skirted the Norwegian coast, flew past Britain — sending Typhoon fighter jets to scramble in response — and then finally looped west of Spain and Portugal, attracting Portuguese F-16s. Then the two bombers appeared to return to Russia, Janzen said.
The Tu-95 bombers are not commonly seen close to Europe, Janzen said. Nor are the MiG-31 fighter jets that were intercepted along with other aircraft above the Baltic Sea in two separate incidents Tuesday and Wednesday. It was not immediately clear whether the two incidents above the Baltic represented the same group of seven planes entering and departing a Russian military base at Kaliningrad.
There was no immediate reaction from the Russian government.
Fighter jets from Norway, Britain, Portugal, Turkey, Germany, Denmark, Finland and Sweden were involved in responding to the Russian aircraft, Janzen said. Finland and Sweden are not members of NATO, and they have long refrained from joining the defensive alliance, which was formed after World War II as a bulwark against the Soviet Union.
But military incidents with Russia this year have caused both countries to start to reevaluate their positions. Most recently, the Swedish military last week spent several days searching a vast territory for an unidentified underwater craft suspected to be Russian. Last month, Sweden said two Russian military planes had violated its airspace.
A Novus opinion poll released Tuesday found for the first time that more Swedes favored joining NATO than opposed it.
The most recent violation of NATO airspace was last week, when a Russian spy plane flew almost 2,000 feet into Estonian airspace. This year, NATO increased its air patrols based in the Baltics from four to 16 jets, a measure of the newly hot confrontation between the two military juggernauts.
The incidents appear to have set European militaries on edge this week. British fighter jets were scrambled Wednesday to bring a civilian Antonov cargo jet into a London airport; it stopped responding to radio calls from air traffic controllers while flying over the British capital. That caused a supersonic boom that was audible across a large stretch of southeastern England.

Missy Ryan contributed to this report.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/...E8?ocid=TSHDHP

Alex Jones

‪#‎Ukraine‬ says ‪#‎Russia‬ sending tanks over border. http://www.infowars.com/ukraine-says-russian-tanks-have-cr…/



Ukraine Says Russian Tanks Have Crossed the Border
Claim made after vote was held in Donetsk People's Republic on Sunday.
www.infowars.com

Ukraine Says Russian Tanks Have Crossed the Border

Claim made after vote was held in Donetsk People's Republic on Sunday

by Kurt Nimmo | Infowars.com | November 7, 2014

The government in Kiev has once again accused Russia of sending tanks into eastern Ukraine.

Although unconfirmed, the Ukrainian military says 32 tanks and 30 trucks crossed over into the Luhansk region where rebels opposed to the government in Kiev are making a stand.
Citizen journalists, however, claim to have video showing the deployment:



“The deployment continues of military equipment and Russian mercenaries to the front lines,” military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told the BBC.
In August, the Ukrainian government claimed Russia had invaded the country. NATO used the unverified invasion as a pretext when it announced troop deployments in Eastern Europe.
NATO released satellite imagery of what it said were tank and truck columns crossing over into Ukraine. Critics argued it was not clear if the images were of military vehicles inside Russia or Ukraine.

Donetsk Separatist Vote

On Sunday a vote was held in the Donetsk People’s Republic and separatist leader Alexander Zakharchenko was sworn into office.


Military Studies @ArmedResearch
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IMAGES: Photos from today's swearing in ceremony for PM Zakharchenko of the #Donetsk People's Republic. #Ukraine
4:43 PM - 4 Nov 2014

Russia said it “respects” the vote after previously stating it supported it.
“We support the continuation of the Minsk process and advocate holding another meeting of the Contact Group,” said Russian foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov.
The Minsk process is a reference to a ceasefire agreement reached in the capital of Belorussia on September 5.
Earlier this year separatist leaders declared victory after a large number of residents in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions voted in a Crimea-style referendum calling for the establishment of People’s Republics.
On May 24, the two separatist republics signed an agreement creating a confederation called the Federal State of Novorossiya, or New Russia.

http://www.infowars.com/ukraine-says...ed-the-border/

Russia Moving Missiles, Rockets Toward Eastern Ukraine

NATO commander: Deployment of western "rotational forces" needed in Poland, Romania, the Baltics



Russia military parade / AP

BY: Bill Gertz
November 6, 2014 5:00 am

Russia is sending additional military forces toward the border with eastern Ukraine, including units equipped with ballistic missiles, as part of Moscow’s ongoing destabilization effort in support of pro-Russian rebels.
U.S. officials with access to intelligence reports said one Russian military unit equipped with short-range ballistic missiles was detected this week near eastern Ukraine, where Russia has launched a destabilization program following its military annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea in March.
The military movements coincided with the an unusual number of flights last week by Russian strategic nuclear bombers and aircraft along Europe’s northern coasts in a what NATO’s military commander called strategic “messaging” toward the West.
“My opinion is that they’re messaging us,” Gen. Phillip Breedlove, the commander, told reporters at the Pentagon this week. “They’re messaging us that they are a great power and that they have the ability to exert these kinds of influences in our thinking.”
The bomber flights included three days of paired Tu-95 bomber flights that were to have circumnavigated Europe from the north but instead were halted near Portugal.
U.S. officials said Russia deployed several Il-78 refueling tankers in Egypt that were to resupply the bombers during flights over the Mediterranean, but those flights were scrapped for unknown reasons.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg expressed concerns about Russian military moves in Ukraine during remarks to reporters Tuesday in Brussels.
“Recently we are also seeing Russian troops moving closer to the border with Ukraine, and Russia continues to support the separatists by training them, by providing equipment, and supporting them also by having special forces, Russian special forces, inside the eastern parts of Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said.
Other officials said both intelligence and social media reports in recent days revealed an increase in Russian deployments.
The missile systems being deployed were described as conventionally armed, short-range ballistic missiles, multiple launch rocket systems, and BM-21 Grad multiple rocker launchers.
Additionally, Russian military forces are moving towed artillery pieces closer to the border.
One official said the display of military power is part of Moscow’s effort to reinforce “separatists” seeking to carve out a pro-Russian enclave in Eastern Ukraine.
The Russian “Spetsnaz” or special forces commandos are already inside the country, but the ground forces as of Wednesday appeared to be staging at the border.
Russian military forces in Ukraine number around 300 commandos. “These are not fighting formations. These are formations and specialists that are in there doing training and equipping of the separatist forces,” Breedlove said.
The buildup is either part of a plan for military escalation, or a coordinated pressure tactic by Moscow to force Ukraine to make concessions to the rebels, officials said.
Rebel groups in the region have made repeated threats to take control of the key southeastern Ukrainian port of Mariupol and other territory unless the Ukrainian government agrees to make changes in the current separation line.
“The build up may just be a pressure tactic to force such concessions, or it may presage further escalation,” one official said.
Rebels in eastern Ukraine recently held elections that Ukraine and NATO dismissed as illegal. New charges were raised in Kiev Wednesday about violations of a peace agreement reached in Belarus in September.
Breedlove said Monday there was no “huge change” in Russian deployments. Currently about seven battalion task groups are stationed near the border with Ukraine.
“Some of those formations have moved closer to the border,” he said. “We believe that was probably to bring some pressure on and make sure that the elections went according to the separatist plans; we’ll look now to see if they pull back from the border into their previous border locations.”
“We have now realistically entered the phase of a ‘frozen conflict,’” Yury Yakimenko, a political analyst at Ukraine’s Razumkov political research center told Reuters. The term frozen conflict has been applied to other former Soviet Republics where separatists are being backed by Russian forces.
Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is part of a program by Russian President Vladimir Putin to gain control or hegemony over former Soviet bloc states described as the “near abroad.”
Putin is seeking to restore Russian power with territorial seizures, along with a large-scale nuclear and conventional forces buildup.
Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen M. Lainez said Russian forces and equipment remain on Ukraine’s border and on Ukrainian territory in violation of international law. “We again call on Russian authorities and the separatists they back to abide by their commitments under the Sept. 5 ceasefire agreement and the Sept. 19 implementing agreement,” she said.
Breedlove said the Russians in the past have conducted small-scale bomber flights.
“And what you saw this past week was a larger, more complex formation of aircraft carrying out a little deeper and, I would say, a little bit more provocative flight path,” he said. “And so it is a concern.”
The flights are destabilizing and “problematic,” Breedlove said.
Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, also voiced concerns about the Russian bomber flights.
“When it comes to the increased Russian military activity, both in the air but also along the borders of Ukraine, I think that what we see is, especially when it comes to increased air activity of Russian planes, is that they are showing strength, and what we are doing is what we are supposed to do: we are intercepting the Russian planes, whether it is in the Atlantic Sea or the Baltic Sea or in the Black Sea,” he said.
Breedlove said he has discussed with U.S. military chiefs the idea of moving additional troops and supplies closer to Russia as a result of “increased pressure that we feel in Eastern Europe now and because of the assurance measures that we are taking in the Baltics, in Poland, in Romania.”
“I believe there is a requirement for rotational forces in the future until we see the current situation begin to normalize,” he said.
Breedlove said the halt in the conflict in Ukraine has been “pretty much a cease-fire in name only.”
“There continue to be sporadic engagements in and around the cease-fire zone,” he said. “And the second thing that I would say that has changed is we have seen a general trend towards a hardening of this line of demarcation and much more softening of the actual Ukraine-Russia border.”
Russia’s border with Ukraine in the east is open and completely porous. As a result, Russian military equipment is flowing back and forth the border
“Russia continues to resupply the Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine,” Breedlove said.

http://freebeacon.com/national-secur...stern-ukraine/