Bellicose rhetoric from Western officials is “irresponsible” in the absence of proof to back up airspace violation claims, Dmitry Peskov has said

FILE PHOTO. ©  Sputnik/Victor Tolochko

Threats by NATO member states to shoot down Russian warplanes are “reckless and irresponsible,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said. He insisted that no hard evidence has been presented to back up allegations that Russian fighter jets violated bloc members’ airspace.

Earlier this month, Poland alleged that multiple Russian drones had entered its territory. Estonia made similar claims of airspace violations last Friday, requesting urgent consultations with fellow NATO member states.

Moscow has denied any breaches of the military bloc’s airspace. Responding to the Estonia claim, the Russian Defense Ministry said three MiG-31s were conducting a routine flight from Karelia Region, east of Finland, to an airfield in Kaliningrad Region, a Russian exclave bordering Poland and Lithuania, and that they strictly flew over neutral waters of the Baltic Sea.

When asked to comment on a report by Bloomberg, in which Western diplomats were cited as threatening to shoot down intruding Russian warplanes, Peskov said on Friday that “this is a very reckless and irresponsible statement.”

“Allegations against Russia that its warplanes have violated someone’s airspace are groundless,” the official said, noting that “no credible evidence has been produced” to corroborate the claims.

 

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The Bloomberg report cited anonymous officials as claiming that earlier this week, British, French, and German representatives had held a closed-door meeting with Russian officials in Moscow. According to the publication, the Western diplomats warned that NATO was prepared to shoot down Russian warplanes in the event of airspace violations.

Earlier this week, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said he would not rule out such a scenario, but that decisions are made strictly on a case-by-case basis.

In an interview with France’s RTL radio station on Thursday, Moscow’s ambassador to Paris, Aleksey Meshkov, cautioned that such an incident would trigger a “war” between NATO and Russia.