NATO Ally Airspace Tested Amid New Alleged Russian Violation: ISW

The Finnish Ministry of Defense said that it has launched an investigation, alleging that a Russian military plane flew into its airspace Monday morning.

The violation occurred over the Gulf of Finland as a Moscow aircraft flew into Finnish airspace for about two minutes and traveled around 1.6 miles deep, Finnish officials allege. The report marks Finland's first complaint lodged against Russia since joining NATO last spring. The two countries share an 830-mile border in Eastern Europe.

"We take the suspected territorial violation seriously and the investigation has been started immediately," Finnish Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen said in a release Monday.

According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Moscow has not responded to Helsinki's report, although the Russian Ministry of Defense said that its Tu-95MS missile carriers and Tu-22M3 bombers flew over the "neutral waters" of the Baltic, Barents and Norwegian seas earlier Monday.

"This reported incursion likely forwards the ongoing Kremlin effort to undermine Finnish sovereignty and territorial integrity," ISW, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, added in its assessment on the war in Ukraine published Monday.

The ISW also cited its May 22 war assessment regarding the Russian Ministry of Defense's proposal to "reassess" its maritime borders established in 1985 in the Gulf of Finland because they are "based on outdated small-scale nautical navigation maps." As the think tank reported, some Western officials warned that the proposal was an effort by Moscow to revise the maritime zones established in the Baltic Sea.

Lithuania's Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Politico at the time that Russia's proposal was seen as "deliberate, targeted, escalatory provocations to intimidate neighboring countries and their societies." Swedish Commander-in-Chief Mikael Byden also expressed concern that Russian President Vladimir Putin is hoping to control the Baltic Sea, reported ISW.

Also last month, Estonian Police and Border Guard said that Russian law enforcement removed part of a floating barrier used to establish its maritime border with Russia along the Narva River, a boundary that was agreed upon by both countries in 2022 and is put in place every spring.

At the time, the ISW said that the move by Russia means that its border guards "are likely attempting to create contention along the international border between Russia and a NATO member country to gauge NATO reactions to future Russian efforts to challenge established delimitations."

Newsweek reached out to Russia's Ministry of Defense via email Monday for comment.

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