Russia testing NATO defense

Russian warplanes spark first joint Finnish-Swedish scramble as Putin mocks European warnings

Finnish and Swedish fighter jets scrambled together for the first time to intercept Russian warplanes over the Gulf of Finland, as Putin dismissed European security warnings as political clowning.

It wasn't clowning when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

On Sept. 24, Finnish F/A-18 Hornets and Swedish JAS 39 Gripens launched after detecting a Russian military formation in international airspace over the Gulf of Finland, Fox News reported.

The Russian group included a Tu-134 transport plane, MiG-31 interceptors, and Su-30 multirole fighters. It was the first joint scramble of its kind by the two Nordic air forces since both joined NATO.

The intercept landed amid a string of airspace incidents along the alliance’s eastern flank and fresh Russian denials that Moscow has any plan to strike Europe.

Finland joined NATO in April 2023 as the alliance’s 31st member, roughly doubling NATO’s land border with Russia. Sweden followed in March 2024 as the 32nd. Both countries spent years outside the alliance. Now their fighters are flying the same mission on short notice.

On Sept. 18, less than a week before the Finnish-Swedish scramble, armed Russian jets entered Estonian airspace and were intercepted by NATO aircraft. That incident sits in the same stretch of tense weeks as the Gulf of Finland flight.

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