NATO and Swedish air forces conducted reconnaissance near the borders of the Kaliningrad region
On Monday, NATO and Swedish Air Force reconnaissance aircraft conducted flights near the Russian border in the south of the Baltic Sea, according to Western websites that monitor flights of military aircraft, Interfax reported.
According to their information, the E-3A AWACS airborne early warning and control aircraft departed from the Geilenkirchen NATO base in Germany and approached the southern borders of the Kaliningrad region. Initially, it conducted a reconnaissance flight along the Russian land border while staying in Polish airspace, then circled near the Polish city of Gdansk, presumably continuing to observe Russian territory.
Before that, a Swedish Air Force Gulfstream 4 reconnaissance aircraft departed from the Malmen airbase near the city of Linköping and flew from the Baltic Sea to the Kaliningrad region. It carried out a reconnaissance flight along the coast of the Russian region circling in an elongated ellipse at an altitude of about 12,000 meters over the international waters of the Baltic Sea.
It was reported that earlier on Monday, a strategic reconnaissance aircraft of the US Air Force RC-135W, which after departing from the Mildenhall airbase in the UK, flew to the Russian coast in the Barents Sea. During the flight to the Russian border in the Murmansk region it was accompanied by a tanker aircraft.
This reconnaissance plane performs almost daily flights near the Russian border in the Baltic and occasionally over the Barents Sea.
On Friday, March 10th, a strategic reconnaissance aircraft of the US Air Force and Great Britain also carried out joint flights near the Russian borders in the Baltic region. In particular, the same American RC-135W aircraft conducted radio reconnaissance for several hours near Russian territory, including the Kaliningrad region.