STOCKHOLM, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Finland and Sweden said on Friday they had scrambled fighter jets to intercept and identify Russian military aircraft in international airspace over the Gulf of Finland, in the first such joint operation by the two Nordic countries.
The Baltic Sea region, of which the Gulf of Finland is part, is on high alert after incidents involving gas pipeline outages, airspace violations and drone sightings since Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said the operation, which took place on Thursday, showed how the so-called Quick Reaction Alert cooperation could monitor and safeguard both countries' airspace.
"It is a concrete expression of the readiness and trust we have built together – and an expression of the strength in the Nordic, Nordic-Baltic, and broader NATO cooperation in our part of the world," Kristersson wrote in a post on social media X.
"The Baltic Sea has never been as vulnerable as it is now – but it has also never been better protected than it is right now," he said.
The two air forces' jets tracked down and identified a group of Russian aircraft including a transport plane and several fighter jets, the Finnish Air Force said.
The Russian embassies in Stockholm and Helsinki did not immediately respond to requests for comment when contacted by Reuters.
Finland and Sweden both joined NATO following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, departing from a longstanding policy of non-alignment. Their Nordic neighbours Norway, Iceland and Denmark were already members of the Atlantic alliance, as were the three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
(Reporting by Stine Jacobsen, Louise Rasmussen and Elviira Luoma, editing by Terje Solsvik and Gareth Jones)
