Sending more fighter jets into NATO airspace, the Western alliance has begun feeling the Cold War squeeze created by 78-year-old President Joe Biden picking a fight with 68-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin. U.S. and EU allies slapped the Kremlin with new sanctions March 2 over its treatment of 44-year-old Russian dissident Alexi Navalny, poisoned by Russia’s Federal Security Services Aug. 24 with Soviet-era Novichok, spending four months in Germnany recovering, before returning to Moscow Jan. 14, promptly arrested. Putin can’t understand the Western fixation with Navalny now that he’s rotting in a Russian penal colony, other that propping up Navalny as a foil to Putin’s 20 years reign of power. Navalny’s worked for 10 years to develop a national network to overthrow Putin authoritarian government. Putin now believes that Western governments want him removed from office.
NATO scrambled Russian military jets 10 times Monday, in what amounts to clear harassment by the Russian Federation. NATO fighter jets were “scrambled 10 times on Monday, March 29, 2021, to shadow Russian bombers and fighters during and unusual peak of flights over the North Atlantic, North Sea, Black Sea and Baltic Sea,” NATO said, concerned about a possible confrontation. In a six hour period, six Russian jets were intercepted by NATO air forces, raising concerns about a possible accident. Norwegian and Belgian F-16s, and British Typhoons, intercepted at least two Russian Tu-95 Bear bombers with Norwegian F-16 intercepting two Tu-160 Blackjack bombers in the North Sea. Things weren’t any better in NATO’s southern flank, where Turkish, Romanian and Bulgarian fighters responded to two groups of Russian fighters over the Black Sea, where two Italian F-16s intercepted Russian jets.
Accelerated Russian flights relate to the added tensions from new U.S. and EU sanctions, prompting Putin to order more patrols, letting NATO know that Russia still has its airspace covered. NATO says that Russia does a poor job of transmitting a transponder code giving GPS positioning or a flight plan for its aircraft. One mishap could result in a military confrontation with NATO. “Intercepting multiple groups of Russian aircraft demonstrates NATO forces’ readiness and capability to guard the Allied skies 24 hours and day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year,” said Brig. Gen Andrew Hansen, Deputy Chief of Staff Operations at Allied Air Command. What Hansen doesn’t say is the increased Russian activity has presented a new burden on NATO air traffic control systems, hoping to avoid an in-air collision, or worst yet, a dogfight with Russia’s Tu-160 Blackjack or Tu-160 Russian bombers.
Pushing U.S.-Russian relations to the brink, the U.S. has not been closer to war with Russian since the Syrian War, when former President Barack Obama was urged to set up a no-fly zone in the Syrian zone. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged Obama at the time to set up the no-fly zone to protect U.S.-backed rebel groups that came under Russian attack in 2015 when Putin decided to join the fight to save Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. No one in the U.S. press has mentioned a thing about the aggressive approach toward Russia taken by 78-year-old Biden and his 58-year-old Secretary of State Antony Blinken. When Biden called Putin as “soulless killer” March 16, he didn’t help U.S. national security, now heaping enormous pressure on NORAD [North American Aerospace Defense Command] commissioned with defending the continental United States, Alaska and Canada.
No one can figure out why Biden pivoted so dramatically from former President Donald Trump who, generally, had good, cooperative relations with Putin and the Kremlin. Biden promised to restore “diplomacy” to his foreign policy, then promptly accused the Russian Federation of interfering in American election and democracy, blaming Russia for the hacks of SolarWinds softeware, a network management program used by the U.S. government and the military. Instead of asking SolarWinds why their software was vulnerable to Russian hackers, Biden has blamed everything on Putin. Biden and Blinker have placed outsized faith in jailed Russian dissident Alexi Navalny to somehow spur a democratic revolution in Russia. Putin views the press obsession with Navalny as evidence that the West wants to topple his authoritarian rule, meddling with Rissia’s internal affairs.
All the stepped up activity of Russian surveillance flights in Western airspace indicates that Putin sends a strong message to NATO and NORAD that they’d better watch themselves or face possible military confrontation. If Putin were to move on more territory in Ukraine or even annex territory in the Baltic States or Balkans, there’s little NATO or NORAD could do to stop him short of going to war. “Russia continues to conduct frequent military operations in the approaches to North American,” said U.S. Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck. Gen. VanHerck told Congress that increased Russian patrol activity expands the risk of a mishap between the U.S. and Moscow. “NORAD responded to more Russian military flights off the coast of Alaska that we’ve in any years since the end of the Cold War,” suggesting that Biden and Blinken must do something urgently to defuse the situation before it’s too late.
