Sweden said on Saturday it had scrambled two pairs of JAS 39 Gripen fighter jets a day earlier to intercept two Russian warplanes flying over the Baltic Sea near its airspace.
The two incidents occurred on Friday in the southern and northern parts of the Baltic Sea. NATO warplanes were also scrambled “to maintain security in shared airspace,” the Swedish military said in a statement.
Swedish airspace was not violated in connection with the incidents, she said.
“Russian actions are serious and constitute a repeated pattern of behavior that threatens our territorial integrity and security,” Vice Admiral Ewa Skoog Haslum, the armed forces’ chief of joint operations, said in a statement.
Sweden joined NATO in March 2024.
Tensions over the Baltic Sea have risen sharply since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
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