From Echo Moskvy:
Finland accuse Russia of violating their airspace and scrambled their planes
The incident occurred in the region of the Finnish gulf.
A group of Russian fighters and bombers were flying near to the Finnish border, and two planes went over into the republic’s territory for some time. This happened yesterday, the Finnish defence ministry says. The agency explains that Finnish air defence forces scrambled their fighters and identified the Russian aircraft. At the moment, the Finnish border forces are investigating Russia over the violation of another country’s airspace. No comment has been made by the Russian military. Also, in recent weeks, this is the second time that Finland have accused Russia of violating her borders. The previous incident took place on the 13th May. However, at the time, Moscow said that “according to objective observation, the airforce of the Western region did not violate Finnish airspace.”
The Finnish government earlier stated that due to the violation of its airspace by Russian aeroplanes, they had to buy new radars. The first of them came into service with the air force last winter.
Comments from Echo Moskvy:
gomofob2:
How awful! The great Finland scrambled all three of their fighters! And doesn’t it seem a bit like the hysterics of certain people in Finland, hoping to get financing for another radar and another two fighters, getting money ringfenced for it?
kavlagen1972: (responding to above)
The opposite, probably, it’ll turn out that the Russian pilots’ navigation aids were broken, and we need to buy new ones immediately. Or maybe they were flying high.
zighem__: (also responding to previous commenter)
Well, in terms of Finland, size isn’t everything, we can think back to the Soviet-Finnish war
avisv: (responding to above)
Times have changed. Now nobody will be trying to get into Finland on skis with a machine gun under their belt. They have helicopters for that now.
lebedev__64__:
GPS and Glonass didn’t agree. There needs to be a confrontation!
redial:
Immediate sale of C-300 [anti-aircraft system] in Finland. The Russian defence industry will earn money on anti-aircraft systems as well as planes.
it_lawyer:
It wouldn’t be bad to apologise to our neighbours, if this really happened. If, having violated their airspace, we start lying, passing the buck, then it’ll happen the same way it always does with our Falcons, ie: we’ll end up looking like beasts. They shat in a clean place and are dumping it all on decent citizens.
Further comments from Echo Moskvy:
smerthomjachkov:
These Finns probably think the Finnish gulf belongs to them.
ku_ku:
We can confirm this on paper… our planes don’t fly that far…
y_kovalenko:
It’s not our fault, they poured the water there themselves!
gen_sko:
The flight took place within the statistical margins for Glonass.
