Monthly Archives: April 2017

More Nato fighter jets are being scrambled to monitor and intercept Russian planes than at any time since the end of the Cold War as tensions continue to rise.

Around 780 deployments were made from European military bases last year in response to Russian aircraft, compared to just 410 in 2015.

British planes have been scrambled in numerous operations involving the RAF, which has pilots in theQuick Reaction Alert forceready to launch 24-hours a day.

Incidents have seen Russian bomber planes approach the UK several times, including when Blackjack bombers spent more than five hours skirting British airspace in February.

Russian planes are not known to have violated international regulations or entered any EU nations sovereign airspace, flying instead into identification zones in international airspace that are monitored for security.

A typical response sees fighter jets launched by the nearest country to visually identify the foreign aircraft and ascertain whether it is a threat, frequently flying alongside until the Russian plane breaks away and turns back.

A further 90 alerts were sparked by non-Russian planes in 2016, such as commercial flights that lost contact with air traffic control, according to officials at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where the US Air Forces in Europe are headquartered.

NATO intercepts Russian bombers

It brings the total number of deployments to 870 in the year, which saw Nato increase its air policing missions after noting a steady increase in Russian military air activity.

Officials at Ramstein told Germanys DPA news agency that the rising number of jets being scrambled was partly due to the Turkish Air Force stepping up its operations under Nato command and launching operations along the Syrian border.

Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet after it crossed the boundaryfor 17 seconds during a bombing mission in 2015, although the Kremlin claimed it had not violated Turkish airspace.

Nato was among the bodies working to defuse tensions following the attack, which was the first time a member state had shot down a Russian or Soviet plane since 1952.

The number of Russian planes intercepted in Eastern Europe fell slightly last year, with the Lithuanian ministry of defence saying there were 110 deployments in 2016, compared to 160 the previous year.

However, the number is still more than double that seen before the Ukrainian conflict, which has driven worsening relations between Russia and the EU over the Kremlins military intervention and annexation of Crimea.

The figures were revealed after Russian planes approached the Alaskan coast for four nights in a row this week, sparking two intercepts and two monitoring operations.

The North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad) told The Independent two Tu-95 Bear bombers were intercepted on Monday and Thursday, and monitored on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, an IL-38 Russian maritime patrol aircraft appeared and was watched.

US Air Force First Lt Lauren Hill, a spokesperson for Norad, said the latest incident on Thursday saw two American F-22 Raptor stealth fighters and two Canadian Air Force CF-18 Hornets scrambled.

They were launched to intercept two Russian bear bombers off the coast of Alaska at around 7pm local time (2am BST) andvisually identify the foreign aircraft.

They were always in the 200-mile radius that is the Alaskan Air Identification Zone but at no time did they enter sovereign North American airspace, which is 12 miles from land, First Lt Hill said.

All four flights were conducted safely and professionally.

An RAF Typhoon shadows Russian navy vesselsas they pass through the English Channel (MoD)

Incidents have not been seen in the same level of intensity by the US since 2014, but Norad is understood not to consider the Russian behaviour abnormal.

Before last week, the most recent previous incident seeing Russian aircraft intercepted by American forceswas in 2015.

That saw a pair of Russian bombers fly just 40 miles off the coast of California and around Alaska on 4 July, when a pilot relayed the message: Good morning, American pilots. We are here to greet you on your Fourth of July Independence Day.

A Russian intelligence ship, the Viktor Leonov, has recently been spotted off the US coast and two months ago, Russian aircraft had several encounters with the USS Porter as it sailed in the Black Sea.

US-Russian relations have soured in the wake of Mr Trumps vow to improve ties with Moscow, following mounting tensions over Syria and Ukraine.

The two conflicts, seeing Vladimir Putin back his allies Bashar al-Assad and the former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, have also increased tensions between Russia and the EU.

Amid increased military deployments and rival drills, both Nato members and Russia have accused each other of warmongering amid fears over a new arms race.

In Natos latest air exercise, codenamed Ramstein Alloy, fighter jets from the Baltic air policing mission, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Norway and the US will practice intercepts over Lithuania on Tuesday.

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Nato intercepting highest number of Russian military planes since the Cold War as 780 incidents recorded in 2016 - The Independent

TALLINN, Estonia - One of the reasons the U.S. Congress has launched an investigation into Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election is to "prevent the same kind of thing happening" to its NATO and other allies, U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said Saturday.

Ryan spoke at a news conference with Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas in Tallinn, the Estonian capital, during a visit by a bipartisan congressional delegation to the Baltic NATO member and staunch Washington ally.

While the Republican speaker claimed that Russia's alleged meddling didn't affect the outcome of the election won by U.S. President Donald Trump he said its actions "cannot be tolerated."

"One thing we know for certain is that Russia meddled in our election," Ryan said. "This is a foreign country trying to meddle within the internal activities of a sovereign country or a democracy."

He stressed the U.S has a responsibility to share the results of the Russia investigation with countries like Estonia, which in recent years has faced aggressive Russian disinformation campaigns along with Baltic neighbors Latvia and Lithuania.

"What we're doing through our investigation process is to figure out exactly what is it they did and how they did it so that we can help, equip and assist our allies to prevent the same kind of thing happening to them," Ryan said.

He thanked Estonia a country of 1.3 million for its strong commitment to cyber defense and NATO, and for being one of the very few NATO members to spend two percent of its GDP on defense.

"We're here to say thank you for meeting that pledge," Ryan said.

Estonia's relations with neighboring Russia have remained cold and uneasy since the former Soviet republic gained independence in 1991. Among other things, bilateral ties have suffered due to Estonia's success at catching spies working for Moscow.

Ryan was meeting with Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid later Saturday with his eight-lawmaker delegation. Estonia was the last stop in the delegation's European tour, which also included visits to Britain, Norway and Poland.

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Russia probe will help NATO, U.S. allies, Ryan says - Newsday

Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. He has written for many newspapers and magazines in the UK and other countries including The Guardian, Morning Star, Daily and Sunday Express, Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, The Spectator, The Week, and The American Conservative. He is a regular pundit on RT and has also appeared on BBC TV and radio, Sky News, Press TV and the Voice of Russia. He is the co-founder of the Campaign For Public Ownership @PublicOwnership. His award winning blog can be found at http://www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. He tweets on politics and world affairs @NeilClark66

Just imagine if over 1,200 Russian troops were carrying out major military drills over a two week period in Mexico, a country that borders the United States. Would media headlines be warning about US aggression? Of course not.

Yet 1,200 NATO troops have been carrying out military exercises in Latvia, the Baltic country that shares a border with Russia. Guess who is being portrayed as the aggressor? You got it: the big, bad Russian bear.

This week, NATO's Summer Shield military exercises got underway at the Adazi military base. Soldiers from Latvia, the US, Bulgaria, Estonia, Canada, Lithuania, the UK, Luxembourg, Romania, Slovakia, Germany and also non-NATO member Sweden are taking part in the drills, which have been held in the country since 2004.

The US Air Force has sent several of its newest stealth fighters to the UK as part of an initiative to reassure Europe in the face of Russian aggression, reported the Independent newspaper on Easter Monday.

In March, ITV announced"UK troops arrive in Estonia for NATO mission to deter Russian aggression."

Over the past few months theres been a massive military build-up in Eastern Europe by NATO, but all we hear is the same old phrase: "Russian aggression, Russian aggression, Russian aggression." Yet proof is wanting.

Todays mantra regarding Russian aggression is the 2003 equivalent of Saddams Weapons of Mass Destruction, to be repeated ad nauseum by anyone supporting NATOs Drang nach Osten. And like the WMD claim, its based on zero evidence.

The two examples of so-called Russian aggression that hawks routinely cite in order to portray Putin as a threat were in fact nothing of the sort. No matter how many times you read the phrase in neocon propaganda pieces, there was no Russian invasion of Ukraine. What did occur was that after a Western-supported regime change operation against a democratically-elected government in Kiev, the predominantly Russian population of Crimea (the province where the Russian Black Sea fleet was already based) quite understandably voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to rejoin Russia. If there had indeed been a Russian invasion of Ukraine, then the people of Kiev would certainly know about it.

And in Georgia in 2008, it was the tie-chewing Western-backed President Mikhail Saakashvili who started the conflict in South Ossetia. This is not a pro-Russian version of events, its simply the truth.

As the EU report of 2009 declared, "There was no ongoing armed attack by Russia before the start of the Georgian operation ... Georgian claims of a large-scale presence of Russian armed forces in South Ossetia prior to the Georgian offensive could not be substantiated."

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Once we reject the claims of Russian aggression in Ukraine and Georgia, then the case for regarding Putin as a threat crumbles. We could of course go back further (as neocons indeed do) and talk about events in the Soviet era, such as the invasion of Finland in 1939, but that wasnt Russia and in any case, why do that when weve got much more recent examples of invasion and military interventions to look at?

Any fair-minded and objective observer, looking at the history of the past 25 years, would conclude that the worst culprits when it comes to threatening the peace are the NATO powers themselves - not Russia. In horse-racing terminology, when it comes to attacking other sovereign states its the US and its allies - not the country led by Vladimir Putin - who have the best form.

In 1999, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which had not threatened to invade anyone, was subject to a 78-day humanitarian bombing campaign by NATO. There was no let up on the attack, not even at Orthodox Easter.

In 2001, US and its allies invaded Afghanistan.

Two years later, a US-led coalition invaded Iraq on fraudulent grounds that the country possessed WMDs. In 2011, NATO bombed Libya, the country with the highest living standards in Africa, back to the Stone Age. Its leader, Muammar Gaddafi, was brutally murdered, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gloating, "We came, we saw, he died."

In Syria, NATO powers and their regional allies have been backing jihadist rebels to overthrow the government, and have also been bombing the country illegally. In 2015, it was revealed that at least 1.3m people had lost their lives in Americas so-called War on Terror in just three countries- Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, between 2001 and the end of 2013.

But hey, lets ignore all this and keep obsessing about Putin and the Russian threat shall we?

Tanks and missiles are not the only weapons that Putin threatens to unleash according to reports. Indeed, we mustn't forget about those super-sexy Russian women. The Copenhagen Post informs that according to a risk assessment from the Danish Defense Intelligence Services, "Russian and pro-Russian agents will do their utmost to discredit the presence of the Danish soldiers and their NATO colleagues in the area and this will include the use of female operatives."

The DDIS report revealed that Danish soldiers should be wary of so-called Russian honey traps the use of beautiful women to put soldiers and agents in compromising positions, as quoted inthe Post.

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You can just imagine Putin getting his battalion of cigarette-holder waving, suspender-wearing "female operatives" ready to ensnare the unsuspecting away from home for the first time Danish soldiers in dive bars in downtown Tallinn. I bet out of all his jobs, its the one the Russian President enjoys the most.

The talk is of getting soldiers into "compromising positions," but in fact the really dubious positions are the ones held by NATO troops in Eastern Europe. After all, we know that they are not there to deter a Russian invasion of Europe. So what are they there for, apart from being the potential victims of Russian Mata Haris?

There are two explanations. First, promoting a non-existent Russian threat is great news for the military-industrial complex, which dear old Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about all those years ago. All you have to do to find the source of Russian threat paranoia, is, as I explained here, is to follow the money trail

The second reason is even more sinister. Namely that an invasion force is being mustered, much like in 1941. The uber-hawks in Washington know that for the US to attain full global hegemony Russia has to be dealt with. A color revolution wont work in Moscow because the liberal politicians the West would love to take power have nowhere near enough public support. A military assault on Russia might be the only way to colonize the country.

Lets take this scenario. In Britain, PM Theresa May is returned with a thumping 80-seat majority in Junes General Election. President Trump knowing he has a War Parliament to rely on in the UK and egged on by the neocons at home, is emboldened to go all-out for regime change in Syria. He calls the UK, who assure him theyre on board for air-strikes against Assad (Note that only this week UKs gung-ho and utterly bonkers Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said that Assad needs decapitating and that the UK could join in any future US attacks on Syria).

US and UK planes then attack Syrian government positions. Russian planes are destroyed as well as Syrian ones. Russia retaliates by firing at US/UK aircraft. NATO responds by ordering Operation Barbarossa 2.0 in self-defense. Note in this context that hawks in the US are already talking positively about the limited use of nuclear weapons.

If it all sounds far-fetched, then remember, Donald Trump is US President and Boris Johnson is UK Foreign Secretary.

Another variation, and probably the more likely one, is that the Kremlin is warned that if it dares to try and retaliate in Syria against the US or UK, NATO troops would sweep into Russia. In other words, the forces built up in Eastern Europe and the Baltics would indeed be used as a deterrent, but not against Russian aggression, as is claimed, but to try and stop Russia defending its allies and its vital strategic interests.

Either scenario is deeply disturbing. The best way to take these options off the table is for citizens of NATO countries to demand their countries stop the military build-up on Russias borders. After all, were the ones paying for this nonsense, at a time when cuts to vital public services are being made at home. To defuse tensions, demilitarized borders in Eastern Europe, as UK Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn has called for, are urgently needed.

Reading about NATOs defensive Summer Shield exercises this week reminded me of being back at university in the 1980s. Anyone who studied law in England will know the famous case of Combe v. Combe (1951) in which Lord Denning ruled that promissory estoppel can only be used as a shield and not a sword. We should insist that NATO, which in recent years has most definitely been used as a sword, follows the same rules. And those Danish soldiers in Estonia should enjoy their posting and any honey-traps while they can.

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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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NATO military games on Russian border: 'Summer Shield' or 'Summer Sword'? - RT