The russians have recently continued to actively test NATO's response to various provocations - from flights of dozens of Gerbera-type UAVs over the territory of Poland to the fact that their MiG-31 fighters were in the airspace of one of the Alliance members - Estonia - for about 12 minutes the other day.
Moreover, from Estonia's statements, it follows that the russian planes could hardly have accidentally flown "in the wrong place" - given the lack of flight plans, turned off transponders, and the lack of communication with the dispatch services. That is, we are talking about another deliberate russian provocation.
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The reaction to the incident with the russian MiG-31s by the head of the Estonian Defense Ministry, Dovilė Šakaliė, is quite telling. She rightly noted that the russian federation is not just checking NATO borders and that the Alliance should take this situation seriously. She also recalled how Turkey 10 years ago set an example of how to respond to such provocations.
Later, the episode with the russian MiG-31s was commented on by the Estonian Ambassador to Ukraine, Anneli Kolk, on TSN, also mentioning how a Turkish F-16 shot down a russian aitcraft.
"The situation in Turkey was a little different. Yes, they warned the russians three times, and then they were shot down by a Turkish fighter, not under NATO command. And in Estonia we do not have our own fighters - Italian planes were on duty in the sky under NATO auspices. So the decision should be made by NATO. This is a little different situation. But of course, NATO should react to this during consultations," the ambassador noted. Earlier, Defense Express told whether Estonia has its own air defense and aviation, as well as why two F-35s did not help against the russian MiG-31.
Indeed, the episode when the Turkish Air Force shot down a russian plane almost 10 years ago has its own prehistory, which is also worth mentioning. In this story, the conditional "starting" point can be called 2012, when Syrian forces shot down a Turkish RF-4E aircraft. It was after this incident that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Ankara was changing its attitude towards the fighting and would consider any "unnecessary" movements from Syria a threat and would react accordingly.
After the russian federation began an operation in support of the Syrian Arab Army in September 2015, Turkey repeatedly officially warned Moscow that it would respond to any violations of the country's borders. After all, on the morning of November 24 of the same year, a Turkish F-16 with an AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missile shot down a russian Su-24 aircraft with tail number 83 "white" and registration number RF-90932, which was returning to the Khmeimim air base.
According to data released by Turkey, the russian planes flew more than 2 km into the country's airspace and stayed there for 17 seconds, and before that, within five minutes they received 10 warnings demanding to change course. The russians then traditionally denied this information.
Today, the issue of an adequate response to russian provocations is more relevant than ever for NATO member states – especially for the Baltic states, which have limited capabilities to combat this threat. However, despite calls from individual countries to finally dare to shoot down russian aircraft, this should be a collective decision - "balancing on the edge of conflict", as Czech President Petr Pavel noted.
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