Fighters from Germany, Hungary and Italy began patrolling the airspace of the Baltic countries as part of the NATO Baltic Air Policing mission on August 1. The German Federal Ministry of Defense announced the entry of the Air Force into service on its Twitter on Monday, August 1.
“From today, the German Air Force will take over the protection of the airspace in the Baltic countries. The Bundeswehr has been regularly participating in Air Policing since 2005 – to ensure security in international airspace and the national sovereignty of the Baltic countries,” the ministry said in a statement.
The new contingents will replace the Belgian, French and Spanish units that have been patrolling the region since April, NATO said. “At a time when European security was fundamentally changed by Russia’s war against Ukraine, fighter jets NATO ready to defend allied airspace around the clock. We are always on the alert,” the official said. representative of the North Atlantic Alliance Ohana Lungescu.
The Baltic Air Policing mission has been operating since 2004
NATO allies take turns guarding the skies over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania since the countries joined the alliance in 2004, as the three do not have their own fighter jets. As part of the NATO mission, fighters take to the skies if foreign aircraft do not comply with flight rules or do not get in touch with air traffic controllers.
“Quick Reaction Aircraft NATO ready to take off within minutes to intercept any aircraft that could threaten allied airspace,” the alliance said. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the alliance further increased air patrols, the NATO statement says.
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NATO-Russia Founding Act turns 25
Rapprochement was successful
A symbolic photo of a bygone era. Italian Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola and Russian General Nikolai Makarov are clearly pleased. In May 2011, the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee and the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces signed a document at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels on further deepening cooperation. Its foundation was laid on 27 May 1997 by the NATO-Russia Founding Act.
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NATO-Russia Founding Act turns 25
First steps towards each other
Rapprochement began in Soviet times. In July 1990, a few days after the NATO summit in London announced that it no longer considered the Warsaw Pact countries as adversaries, the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Alliance, former German Defense Minister Manfred Wörner came to Moscow for talks with the President USSR by Mikhail Gorbachev.
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NATO-Russia Founding Act turns 25
The military makes contacts
Regular official contacts at the highest military level began in April 1992. Pictured is Air Marshal Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, Commander-in-Chief of the CIS Armed Forces, giving an interview to Russian television in Brussels against the backdrop of the NATO emblem. In 1994, at the initiative of the alliance with the participation of Russia, the program of international military-political cooperation “Partnership for Peace” was launched.
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NATO-Russia Founding Act turns 25
The feud seemed to be over forever
Paris, May 27, 1997. The NATO-Russia Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security has been signed. Presidents of the United States, Russia and France Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin and Jacques Chirac, along with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and the leaders of other countries of the alliance, are rejoicing at the beginning of a new era. After all, the enmity, as it seemed, was over forever, and the Russian Federation is not against admitting new members to NATO.
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NATO-Russia Founding Act turns 25
The NATO-Russia Council is in session
The NATO-Russia Council, established in 2002, became the main platform for discussing military-political problems and coordinating cooperation. In August 2008, due to the Russian-Georgian war, the members of the alliance suspended its work, but resumed it less than a year later. At the council’s meeting in Berlin in April 2011, the situation in Libya and Afghanistan was at the center of attention of the foreign ministers.
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NATO-Russia Founding Act turns 25
In 2008, Vladimir Putin achieved his
In April 2008, Vladimir Putin participated in a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council, which was held as part of the NATO summit in Bucharest. At the press conference, he looked satisfied. Due to objections mainly from Germany and France, the Bucharest summit postponed indefinitely the entry into NATO of Ukraine and Georgia, which the Russian president had been trying to achieve in every possible way.
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NATO-Russia Founding Act turns 25
NATO Secretary General feels at home
July morning in 2011, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen began in St. Petersburg with the usual jog. On the eve of the NATO-Russia Council in Sochi, negotiations on missile defense and nuclear weapons were difficult, but the search for mutually acceptable solutions continued. And on this day he was to make a speech in the city on the Neva with a speech to the cadets of the Naval Academy named after N. Kuznetsov.
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NATO-Russia Founding Act turns 25
Russia could get Mistrals
The confidence that NATO countries had gained by that time in Russia is evidenced by the contract concluded in June 2011 with France for the supply of two Mistral landing helicopter carriers to the Russian army, because such ships are mainly an offensive type of weapon. Only after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 did Paris stop sending ready-made Mistrals from the port of Saint-Nazaire, and then sold them to Egypt.
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NATO-Russia Founding Act turns 25
Together against the pirates
One of the forms of cooperation between Russia and NATO was to ensure the security of international maritime civil navigation. In February 2013, the sailors of the ship of the Northern Fleet of the Russian Navy Severomorsk, together with the crew of the Italian landing helicopter carrier San Marco, worked out tactics to combat pirates in the Gulf of Aden between Yemen and Somalia.
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NATO-Russia Founding Act turns 25
Ulyanovsk did not become a transit point
A major commercial cooperation project could be the use by NATO air forces of the Vostochny airport in Ulyanovsk, which has an extremely long runway, as a transshipment point for the delivery of alliance cargo from Western Europe to Afghanistan and back. However, the idea ran into widespread protests from the Russian public, and in 2012 it was abandoned.
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NATO-Russia Founding Act turns 25
Contribution to the development of telemedicine
Russia and NATO cooperated not only in the military, but also in the scientific and technical sphere. One of the projects was the development of distance medical care systems. Telecommunication equipment for continuous communication via communication satellites with medical centers was supposed to be used, for example, in the emergency removal of patients by air from remote settlements.
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NATO-Russia Founding Act turns 25
Defense ministers are still smiling
In October 2013, a regular meeting of the NATO-Russia Council at the level of defense ministers was held in Brussels. Relations between the Russian Federation and Western countries have already deteriorated, but Sergei Shoigu and his American counterpart Chuck Hagel demonstrated trusting relations and good mood. Or were they just pretending? Four months remained before the start of the Russian military operation to seize Crimea.
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NATO-Russia Founding Act turns 25
NATO sided with Ukraine
After the annexation of Crimea by Russia and the outbreak of war in eastern Ukraine, the North Atlantic Alliance froze military cooperation with the Russian Federation, and invited Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to the NATO summit in September 2014 in Newport, Britain. In a statement by the NATO-Ukraine Commission, both sides, condemning the actions of the Russian Federation, stressed “a firm commitment to the further development of a special partnership.”
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NATO-Russia Founding Act turns 25
Last attempt to prevent war
In December 2021, against the background of the concentration of Russian troops near the borders of Ukraine and Moscow’s ultimatum to NATO to return to the borders of 1997, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg proposed urgently convening a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council. On January 12, 2022, two Deputy Ministers of the Russian Federation arrived in Brussels. A month and a half later, Russia attacked a neighboring country and thus crossed out the results of 25 years of cooperation with the alliance.
Author: Andrey Gurkov
