In the Baltic Sea, underlying tensions persist. A Russian SU-24 plane violated Swedish airspace near the strategic island of Gotland on Friday, and only left after the country took off two fighter jets, the military said Swedish.
This incident occurs three months after the Scandinavian country became a member of NATO, after two centuries of neutrality and then military non-alignment. “On Friday afternoon, an SU-24 combat aircraft violated Swedish airspace east of the southern tip of Gotland. The Swedish Air Combat Command warned the Russian aircraft with a verbal call,” the country’s armed forces said in a statement.
Strategic importance of the island of Gotland
“As the warning was not heeded and the plane did not deviate from its route, it was expelled from Swedish airspace by two JAS-39 Gripen (fighter jets),” according to the text, which also specifies that the violation was “brief”.
The island of Gotland is located less than 350 km from the highly militarized Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. According to Swedish military doctrine, whoever controls this island is able to largely control air and naval movements in the Baltic Sea.
Sweden reopened its garrison on Gotland in 2018, after years of cutting military spending that led to its closure in 2004. Russia’s last violation of Swedish airspace was in March 2022, when Swedish fighters intercepted two SU-24s and two SU-27s over Gotland.
Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 had prompted Sweden to strengthen its military again and Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 subsequently led to Sweden’s historic decision to join the ‘NATO.