March 12th Russia violated Estonian airspace, btw.Smitty-48 wrote:Can't say that we are going nowhere on the Ladder of Escalation, since we have already gone somewhere.
Interesting note, two USAF RC-135W SIGINT birds departed RAF Mildenhall in within an hour today, one at 0655Z, the next at 0846Z, both have taken up orbit over Estonia along the Russian border.
With Russia every aspect of what is happening on the border, are there planes violating the your air space or not, are the "problems" in Russian customs or at worst are their refugees pouring to your country from Russia etc., is directly about State relations between Russia and the country involved. Because if there is one thing the FSB does well (apart from influencing US elections perhaps), it's keeping the borders under control. Hence any refugee wondering from Russia into here without a visa into EU states is a decision made by Putin.
Other countries might take international agreements as guidelines, but for Russia it's a direct way to politically influence the country. So we here haven't had airspace violations for a long time now, so I guess Russia is confident that Finland isn't joining NATO anytime soon.
