Sao Paulo
Faced with increasing international tensions due to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the United States decided this Tuesday (24) to once again test the operational readiness of Russian air defense its indirect rival in both conflicts.
There were two interceptions at different locations in Europe, an unusual event. A Russian Sukhoi Su27 fighter aircraft was stationed over the Baltic Sea to prevent the arrival of two US B1B strategic bombers.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the plane turned around without endangering Russian airspace. The Baltics have been a minefield in relations between Moscow and the West due to Finland’s entry into NATO (Western military alliance) and gas pipeline incidents on both sides.
The case attracted attention because it involved two simultaneous B1Bs, supersonic aircraft designed for nuclear strikes against the former Soviet Union but now using only conventional weapons.
The second episode occurred in the Black Sea, bordering the Ukraine conflict region, when another Su27 intercepted an RQ4 Global Hawk reconnaissance drone near Russian territory. The robotic plane, one of the largest in the world, also made a turn and deviated from its route.
Despite the war, the Black Sea became another breach in the borders between Russia and its Western allies. Earlier this year, an RQ9 Reaper reconnaissance and attack drone was rammed by another Russian Su27 and crashed.
Last week, the region was put on the map of Israel’s escalating war when President Vladimir Putin said it would be patrolled by MiG31 fighter jets carrying Kinjal hypersonic missiles to, as he put it, “control” American actions in the Mediterranean. .
About 1,300 km south of the neutral maritime region lies the Israeli coast, where an American aircraft carrier group is patrolling, ostensibly to dissuade Putin’s ally Iran from escalating the war. Tehran is an ally of Hamas, which attacked the Jewish state and sparked the current conflict, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which is supporting the Palestinians in border skirmishes in northern Israel.
The interceptions themselves occur on a regular and weekly basis in several conflictaffected regions such as the Black and Baltic Seas, Alaska, the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. The biggest risk is that someone makes a mistake and hits their rival, as the Americans accused the Chinese of taking risks with dangerous maneuvers or when a Russian fighter fired a missile near a British spy plane in 2022.
The incidents come as NATO’s nuclear forces conduct their largest annual nuclear strike exercise in the region between Italy and Croatia.