In this photo provided by the French Army on April 20, 2026, a Russian supersonic Tu-22M3 strategic bomber flies over the Baltic Sea. Etat-Major des Armees via AP

NATO intercepted Russian strategic bombers and fighter jets that flew over the Baltic Sea on Monday, a muscular display of air power on the alliance's eastern flank away from the spotlight on the Middle East.

French Rafale fighters were deployed from a Lithuanian air base where they are stationed as part of a decades-long NATO air-policing effort. The fighters armed with air-to-air missiles joined jets from Sweden, Finland, Poland, Denmark and Romania. They all took to the skies to inspect and keep watch on the Russian flight, the French detachment said.

The Russian mission included two supersonic Tu-22M3s, as well as about 10 fighters — both SU-30s and SU-35s — that took turns escorting the larger strategic bombers, according to the statement.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the long-range bombers' flight was scheduled and occurred in airspace over the neutral waters of the Baltic Sea. The flight took more than four hours, the ministry said Monday on Telegram.

"At certain stages of the route, the long-range bombers were accompanied by fighters of foreign states," the ministry said. "Crews of long-range aviation regularly conduct flights over the neutral waters of the Arctic, the North Atlantic, the Pacific Ocean, as well as the Baltic and Black Seas. All flights of Russian Aerospace Forces aircraft are carried out in strict compliance with international rules for the use of airspace."

The ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. It often reports flights by its strategic bombers over the Baltic Sea, including in January — when NATO jets also flew up to meet them — and at least four times last year.

NATO's Allied Air Command also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

The military alliance routinely scrambles fighter aircraft to intercept Russian warplanes that approach or fly near NATO airspace. NATO says the Russian planes it intercepts often fail to use their transponders and don't communicate with air traffic controllers or file a flight plan. NATO jets are sent up to identify them.

Many of the Russian flights that NATO monitors with its Baltic air policing mission — in place since Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia joined the alliance in 2004 — are to and from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Even before the war in Ukraine, NATO was intercepting Russian planes around 300 times each year, mostly over waters around northern Europe.

A journalist from The Associated Press witnessed the French detachment's response on Monday from the sprawling Šiauliai Air Base in Lithuania. NATO uses the base for fighter patrols that police the skies on the alliance's eastern flank.

Two French Rafale fighter jets' two-man crews — a pilot and a navigator — were seen racing in two vans to the planes' hangars from the headquarters building the French detachment uses during its four-month deployment on the air base.

The crews were already suited up because they'd been on standby, so they would be ready to take to the air within minutes if scrambled.

The two crews quickly took their places in their planes' cockpits. They were then put on hold, with the planes' jet engines ignited, until they got the order to take off. Then they taxied out of their hangars and roared off into the clear skies.

Monday's flight was the latest in Russia's maneuvers over — and under — the Baltic Sea. Over the last few years, there have been several incidents of alleged Russian sabotage of underwater cables in the sea.

Lithuania's defense ministry said NATO jets were scrambled four times from April 13-19 to intercept Russian aircraft that violated flight rules that included turning off flight transponders and flying without a flight plan.

In April 2025, two Swedish fighter jets under NATO command were scrambled over the Baltic Sea to escort away a Russian reconnaissance plane that was approaching Polish airspace. That same month, Britain said it had dispatched two of its fighter jets to intercept a Russian IL-20 Coot reconnaissance plane, and two days later, the jets intercepted an unknown aircraft leaving Kaliningrad air space.

U.S. and Russian aircraft have had close calls in the region over the years. In 2018, a Russian fighter jet intercepted a U.S. Navy spy plane over international airspace above the Baltic Sea in what the European Command is describing as a safe intercept — even though the aircraft came within 20 feet of each other. In 2017, an armed Russian jet came within five feet of a U.S. reconnaissance plane over the Baltic Sea.

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