In 2019, Norwegian fighter aircraft identified 83 Russian aircrafts off the Norwegian coast. In 2020, the number has been exceeded already in September, reports Nationen.
This weekend, aircraft number 84 was identified, the Armed Forces’ headquarters (FOH) confirms to the newspaper.
Major Brynjar Stordal states that it happened during emergency number 41, as part of NATO’s emergency preparedness (QRA).
“It is not new that planes like this embark on long journeys in our immediate areas, but it is not very common that they have cruises that last so long and travel so far west and south”, Stordal writes in an email to Nationen.
Last year, the defense had to move out at short notice 38 times against Russian aircrafts along the Norwegian coast. The planes in question this weekend were two strategic bombers of the type TU-142. The aircraft was identified by Norwegian F-16s from Bodø, which were routinely in international airspace over the sea areas west of Norway.
Stordal points out that this is something Russia has every right to do, as long as they stay in the international airspace.
Although the number of calls and identifications is higher than last year, it is still far fewer than in 2018, when 57 so-called scrambles and 100 identifications were made, according to Nationen.
© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today
No less seriously, in *our* (American) half of the exclusionary/economic/fishing zone of the Bering Sea off Alaska, Russian warships *ordered* our fishing boats to stop their economic/fishing activity and get out of the way of their maneuvers … even telling them what course to take!
In an another country’s economic/fishing zone that country’s commercial ships should always have right of way and trying to disrupt them is An Act of War.
This is like Dogger Bank 1905, when the Czar’s fleet (headed for the Far East and defeat at Tsushima by the Japanese) attacked British fishing boats thinking they were *torpedo boats*.
So far, Russia has not expressed regret at harassing our Alaska fishermen – famous in the TV series “The Deadliest Catch” – among whom I have friends – or given assurances such an attack won’t happen again.
And as readers here may have noticed, I was *defending* the Russians from wrongful accusations like Salisbury and opposing “interventionist” NATO’s threats against them in Ukraine and Syria.
No more, unless they change their Pacific fisheries behavior and give public assurances their aggression against our fishermen won’t be repeated.
Norway’s fishermen could be at risk too, unless this Russian Navy outlawry is stopped, of course.
World is not enough