Did a Russian jet actually come close to a disastrous collision with a Swedish passenger plane carrying 50 innocent human beings — or not? The alleged near miss was reported this weekend in Western media as the latest example of dangerous Russian aggression in the skies over Europe. But on Saturday, Russia scoffed at the accusation, saying that a NATO plane came even closer to the commercial flight.
A NATO Boeing RC-135 similar to the plane pictured below was spotted flying in the same airspace as the Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) commercial jet, and the NATO plane came closer to the Swedish civilian route than the Russian jet did, Russian defense official Major General Igor Konashenkov claimed.
As an officially neutral country, Sweden is not a member of the NATO alliance.
Scandinavian Airlines Flight SK1755 took off Friday from Kastrup Airport in Copenhagen, Denmark, on its way to Ponzan, Poland. The passenger plane climbed to 25,000 feet when air traffic control suddenly ordered it to drop down to 22,000 to avoid another plane unexpectedly in the area.
The other jet, later confirmed as a Russian intelligence-gathering aircraft, was picked up by Swedish military air traffic controllers, but missed by civilian air traffic control because it was flying with its radar transponder off.
“Our staff gave them a clear recommendation: ‘Do something, turn away,’” said Swedish Air Force head Micael Bydén. “The civil traffic controller then did that.”
“This is serious. This is inappropriate. This is outright dangerous when you turn off the transponder,” Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist added.
NATO has complained repeatedly in recent weeks that Russian jets flying without transponders pose a potentially disastrous threat to civilian aircraft. But Russia shot back after Friday’s incident , accusing NATO of hypocrisy — and saying that its plane was never closer than 42 miles from the Swedish commercial airliner.
The claim that Russian jets flying without transponders activated pose a serious threat is a NATO “deception,” Konashenkov claimed, asserting that NATO planes do exactly the same thing all the time.
“I want to particularly stress that the flights of NATO military planes in the international space on Russia’s borders – which have intensified more than threefold over the last months – are always conducted with disabled transponders,” the Russian general said Saturday. “But that does not mean that the Russian airspace control are not able to detect them.”
Konashenkov also said, “No prerequisites existed for an air accident” in the Friday incident.
On March 3, according to a report from the London-based European Leadership Network, a Russian spy plane just barely missed causing a tragic mid-air collision with a Danish commercial flight carrying 132 people.