June 16, 2019, Strategic Culture Foundation
http://www.strategic-culture.org (Russia)
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/06/16/its-back-cold-war-days-over-baltic/
Wayne
Madsen*
It was like a day from the 1970s.
Except the close encounter between a Russian SU-27 fighter-interceptor and a US
Air Force RC-135V intelligence-gathering plane and a Swedish Gulfstream IV spy
plane occurred on June 10. The incident, which occurred within Polish maritime
airspace near the airspace of the Russian Kaliningrad region, resulted in
diplomatic protests being lodged with the Russian Foreign and Defense
ministries by the US embassy in Moscow.
The air encounter took place on the
second day of the Baltops-2019 NATO naval and air exercise in the Baltic Sea,
in which the United States, Sweden (a non-NATO member), and sixteen other
nations, including non-NATO member Finland, were taking part. Not taking part
in the exercise were NATO members Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg, Canada, Czechia,
Slovakia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Iceland, Croatia, and Montenegro. The exercise
was scheduled for June 9-21.
The Baltops exercise was being held
under the command of the newly-reconstituted US Second Fleet, which is
headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia. The annual exercise concludes with the
participating ships and submarines sailing to Kiel in Germany to participate
