According to the German Air Force (GAF, or Luftwaffe), a Russian surveillance aircraft approached northeastern Germany on Thursday before it was escorted away by fighter aircraft.
The Luftwaffe said on its WhatsApp communication channel that its Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) was activated at the Laage airbase near Rostock, on the Baltic coast in the northeast.
“The reason was an unknown airplane over the Baltic Sea, which was flying without a flight plan or activated transponder,” the GAF said in the message, which confirmed an earlier press report in Bild.
German Eurofighter Typhoons were scrambled to identify the Ilyushin Il-20 reconnaissance plane, which was subsequently “escorted” back toward the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, from where it was first tracked.
Bild said the Russian aircraft was spotted early Thursday east of the German Baltic island Rügen, where it was heading toward “German airspace.”
The fact that the aircraft’s transponder was deactivated presented “a considerable danger to civilian air traffic,” Bild said.
Military sources cited by Bild said that Russian surveillance planes were occasionally identified off the German coast.
Many NATO nations have a QRA system to help protect their airspace.
Tensions over the Baltic Sea have heightened since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.