FEATURE | Russian jets enter Estonia's Baltic Sea airspace in "unprecedentedly brazen" incursion

No flight plans, transponders off

Estonian Defence Forces said the airspace violation occurred on Friday morning in the area of Vaindloo Island, around 100 kilometres from the capital Tallinn.

The aircraft did not have flight plans, their transponders were not switched on and they were not in contact with air traffic control, Estonia said.

While incursions over Vaindloo Island by Russian aircraft are fairly common, they do not usually last as long as Friday's incident. "It's tough to see how this wasn't intentional," a US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said.

The official noted that it was difficult to see a situation where that many Russian aircraft did not know they were in Estonian airspace for that long, but added that a deeper assessment was ongoing.

Jakub M. Godzimirski, a research professor in Russian security policy at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, told Reuters that the incident could be a test, but could also be purely coincidental.

"Still, this happens in a given context, having in mind what happened with the drone incursion in Poland a few days ago," Godzimirski said.

A staunch supporter of Ukraine, Tallinn said in May that Moscow had briefly sent a fighter jet into NATO airspace over the Baltic Sea during an attempt to stop a Russian-bound oil tanker thought to be part of a "shadow fleet" defying Western sanctions on Moscow.

(Reporting by Andrius Sytas, Gram Slattery, Sabine Siebold, Gwladys Fouche, Angelo Amante, Idrees Ali, Anne Kauranen, Louise Rasmussen, Terje Solsvik, Nerijus Adomaitis, Lili Bayer, Andrew Gray, Michelle Nichols, David Latona and Yulia Dysa: Writing by Alan Charlish and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Alex Richardson, Sharon Singleton, Don Durfee and Nick Zieminski)