Europe is experiencing increased, and threatening, intrusions by Russian aircraft and:
NATO war planes have had to scramble 400 times this year in response … a rise of 50 percent over last year, the new secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Thursday.
As Reuters reports, there is plainly method at work here, since:
… the problem was not just where the Russians are flying but that they are not turning on their transponders or communicating. As such, the flights pose a risk to commercial air traffic, [Stoltenberg] said. “It is a pattern which we have not seen for many years and it is a pattern that reminds us of the way they conducted these kind of military air activities back in the time of the Cold War.”
