A series of interceptions of Russian jets near NATO airspace may be an attempt to make the West nervous about supporting Ukraine, a defence analyst has said.
Military analyst Professor Michael Clarke told Sky News that Russia wanted Ukraine’s allies to think the war is “slipping out of control” when it flew planes north of Scotland and in international airspace the Netherlands is responsible for on behalf of NATO.
But the RAF’s Typhoons that intercepted Russian bombers this morning also had a message: there is “no way through NATO airspace”.
“What it comes to is a series of mid-air selfies,” Clarke said, explaining that aircraft frequently take images of each other during these incidents.
“The message of the fighters to the bombers is: Here we are taking photographs of you 50 metres away, if this was war you would have been dead 20 minutes ago.”
He said there may not be any coherent strategy connecting today’s incidents, but if there is, Russia wants “to make everybody nervous”.
“The nature of the Ukraine war is that the Russians want to pretend that this is slipping out of control and that the West is playing with fire by helping Ukraine.”
