According to military expert Marko Eklund, the video most likely depicts a flight related to the suspected violation of Finnish airspace on Monday.
18:40•Updated 18:50
Russia has published a video that very likely shows a Finnish Hornet fighter jet identifying Russian planes over the Gulf of Finland.
The video published by the Russian Ministry of Defense and the state-run Tass news agency shows the flight of TU-95MS and Tu-22M3 type bombers.
The heavy bombers of the Russian long-range air force are escorted by Russian fighters, and the Hornet fighter, which is most obviously Finnish, is also glimpsed in the video.
In the video, the insignia of the Finnish Air Force do not stand out, but a military expert Marko Eklund there are no other options either.
– The environment looks like the southern coast of Finland, and no other countries have Hornet fighters here, so I dare to say that it is a Finnish Hornet, Eklund states.
Major evp Eklund has analyzed the Russian armed forces for a long time and also recognizes the departure point of the bombers from the video – it is the Olenia airbase on the Kola peninsula. At the end of the video, the planes land back on the Olenia field.
According to Eklund, the shot taken from the cockpit of the Tu-22M3 plane shows that the plane was taking off and was then flying at an altitude of 7,240 meters in a direction of 170 degrees, i.e. almost to the south. The direction corresponds to the flight route from the Kola peninsula to the Gulf of Finland.
Eklund points out that you can tell from the sounds in the video which bomber the pictures are of. From the Tu-22M3 plane you can hear the hiss of a jet engine and from the Tu-95 plane you can hear the whirring of the propellers.
Eklund also draws attention to the equipment of the Sukhoi fighter shown in the video.
– It’s armed with anti-aircraft missiles and electronic warfare system tanks at the tip of the wings, says Eklund.
The Russian Ministry of Defense does not say the time of the flight, but according to Eklund, it fits well with Finland’s observation of the Russian plane on Monday.
Finland suspects the Russian plane of airspace violation
According to Russia, the bombers were flying “above neutral waters”, that is, in international airspace above the Baltic Sea, the Barents Sea and the Norwegian Sea.
However, the Ministry of Defense of Finland said yesterday that a Russian military plane is suspected of territorial violation off Loviisa in the eastern Gulf of Finland. So the ministry only talked about one machine, but did not mention the machine type.
The Russian Ministry of Defense mentions in its announcement about the flight of the bombers that “foreign fighters” followed the flight.
The suspected territory violation took place on Monday morning. The plane flew in Finnish airspace for about two minutes, going at its deepest point 2.5 kilometers inside the border.
– We take the suspected territorial violation seriously, and an investigation has been started immediately, says the Minister of Defense Antti Häkkänen (collect.).
The Border Guard is responsible for the preliminary investigation of border violation cases.