US to add six F-15 jet fighters to Nato Baltic patrols, Lithuania says
US send jets to Lithuania as President Dalia Grybauskaite cautions that Russia is trying to redraw Europe according to its own interests
The United States will on Thursday send six additional F-15 fighter jets to step up Nato air patrols over the Baltic states, mission host Lithuania said as West-Russia tensions simmered over Ukraine.
“I have had confirmation that the air police missions will be reinforced by six additional F-15 fighters,” Defence Minister Juozas Olekas told reporters.
The move is a response to “Russian aggression in Ukraine and additional military activity in the Kaliningrad region,” Russia’s exclave bordering Lithuania and Poland, he said.
“We have witnessed increased military activity in Kaliningrad. Today it is lesser than three or four days before,” he added.
The jets will land on Thursday at 9.40am local time at the Zokniai Air Base, once the home of Red Army troops near the northern Lithuanian town of Siauliai, ministry spokesman Vaidotas Linkus added.
President Grybauskaite told reporters in Brussels that the jets are a sign that “Nato is responding promptly and fast”.
“Europe still is not able to understand what is happening,” she said.
“Russia today is dangerous. Russia today is unpredictable.”
“Russia today is dangerous. Russia today is unpredictable.”
Since January, four US F-15 fighter jets have been assigned for air patrols over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – three ex-Soviet Baltic states which are members of Nato and but which lack sufficient aircraft to patrol their skies.
The countries broke away from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991 after five decades of Communist rule and joined Nato in 2004.
They have repeatedly voiced their concern at the Russian military build-up near their border – and the escalating crisis in Crimea has added to that unease.
Grybauskaite on Wednesday urged Nato to increase its “visibility in the Baltic states”.
A defence ministry spokeswoman told the media that Nato had scrambled jets more-than 40 times last year in response to the increased number of flights by Russian aircraft near the Baltic states’ borders.
Nato also sent more fighters to identify Russian aircraft in January and February than in 2012, Viktorija Cieminyte said, declining to provide specific numbers.
