Putin Continues To Play With Fire - A Russian Military Plane Nearly
Collided With A Swedish Passenger Jet Last March
Dangerous Brinkmanship Report Russia Baltic Incidents
The London-based European Leadership Network released a report today
on the “dangerous brinkmanship” between Russia and the West, one
instance of which could have resulted in a passenger plane crash.
The report collates 40 incidents over the past eight months, the
most alarming of which was a near-collision in March between a
Russian military aircraft and a Scandinavian Airlines plane carrying
132 passengers. The Russian plane wasn’t transmitting its position
at the time and a potential disaster “was apparently avoided thanks
only to good visibility and the alertness of the passenger plane
pilots.”
Swedish television reported two months later that the country’s
authorities found reasons to forego opening an investigation —
though this perhaps would not have been the case had the incident
occurred after the shoot-down of MH17 over Ukraine on July 17, which
killed 298 people. Either way, it seems that Russia narrowly avoided
an MH17-like disaster during the opening weeks of the still-ongoing
Ukraine crisis.
The report categorized two other incidents as high risk: the
abduction of Estonian operative Eston Kohver from a border post, and
the likely presence of a Russian submarine in Swedish territorial
waters (though the hunt for the sub was inconclusive).
NATO pilots have scrambled to intercept Russian aircraft more than
100 times this year, the report cites, about three times more than
in 2013. But this year has also seen a series of escalations between
Russia and the west, including the annexation of Crimea, and
Moscow’s assistance to pro-Russian separatists fighting in Ukraine’s
still-restive east.
Swedish minesweeper HMS Koster patrols the waters of the Stockholm
archipelago, on Oct. 19, 2014.
“This mix of beefed-up military postures along the NATO-Russia
border, more aggressive Russian activities, and the readiness of
Western forces to show resolve in the face of the challenge, is ripe
with potential for escalation,” the report states.
Yesterday, the investigative journalism site Bellingcat also posted
an article presenting additional evidence that the weapon
responsible for downing the airliner may have been Russian-supplied.
The Swedish near-miss further demonstrates that the strategic and
tactical recklessness which caused the Malaysian plane’s destruction
was hardly an isolated phenomena.