According to the Latvian Ministry of Defense, in 2014, Russian military aircraft and ships approached the country’s borders more than 250 times.
Meanwhile, in an embarrassing rebuke to the report’s authors, a tweet, apparently posted by a member of the Latvian armed forces, said an Il-72 simply doesn’t exist and the aircraft in question must have been either an Il-76 or an Antonov An-72.
@Latvijas_armija There is no Il-72 plane. Did you mean il-76, or An-72?
— European Pravda (@EuropeanPravda) May 18, 2015
In late January the Russian ambassador to the UK was summoned to the Foreign Office for explanations about Russian military planes allegedly flying in international airspace over the English Channel close to the British borders.
In a statement issued shortly after, the Russian Defense Ministry said that all flights by Russian Air Force aircraft were made “in strict compliance with the international rules on the use of airspace over neutral waters without violating other countries’ borders.”
On March 17 Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said there were a total of about 400 US and NATO military bases and installations.
“US RC-135 reconnaissance planes are flying in the direct vicinity of the Russian borders almost on a daily basis. 137 such cases were registered in 2014 alone, compared to just 22 in 2013,” General Antonov noted.
