The British Royal Air Force scrambled warplanes to intercept two Russian bombers flying off the coast of Cornwall in the southwest portion of England.
Typhoon warplanes blasted off from an air base in England and led the two Russian planes into international airspace, “out of the U.K. area of interest,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement on Thursday, the New York Times reported.
“At no time did the Russian military aircraft cross into U.K. sovereign airspace,” the Defense Ministry went on, the New York Times reported.
The incident reminds of Cold War days when Russia routinely sent bombers near Western defense lines.
Earlier this month, two Russian long-range bombers were seen flying in the airspace above the English Channel that separates Britain and France, the New York Times said.
These latest Russian incursions come just as Michael Fallon, the defense minister for Britain, warned that President Vladimir Putin could be trying to copycat the tactics he used in Ukraine against Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, former Soviet bloc nations that are now NATO members.
“NATO has to be ready for any kind of aggression from Russia,” he said, the New York Times reported. “You have tanks and armor rolling across the Ukrainian border and you have an Estonian border guard being captured and not yet still returned. When you have jets being flown up the English Channel, when you have submarines in the North Sea, it looks to me like it’s warming up.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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