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Russia Says U.S. Planes Keep Active Spying on Borders
A top Russian army official said Friday that in the latest years U.S. military planes have kept intensive spying reconnaissance on Russia's borders and been tracked by Russian air defense systems every week.
The Russian air-defense forces every week detect and escort between 12 and 15 foreign spy planes in the air space adjacent on its borders, Commander in Chief of the Russian Air Forces, Army General Anatoly Kornukov, told a news briefing here on the occasion of Air-Defense Forces Day.
He said that more than 600- 700 foreign combat planes are sighted by Russian air defense systems every year, half of which are air surveillance planes.
He noted that NATO and U.S. air surveillance planes are particularly active over the Barents Sea and over the territories of the states near Russia. Norway carries out intensive air surveillance activity over the Kola Peninsula.
Intensive air surveillance activities have also been traced in the area of the Sea of Japan, the Pacific Ocean and the sea off Kamchatka, he said.
The air surveillance activities are not so intensive on Russia's southern frontiers as over its northern ones, but the situation there is quite tense, too, Kornukov said.
In light of this, the CIS joint air defense forces are being reactivated at present. Russia maintains automated data exchanges with Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and Russia's central command of the air-defense forces maintains direct contacts with all the member countries of the unified CIS air-defense system.
According to Kornukov, Russia sees its south airspace, particularly the Russia- Kazakhstan border, and the north part from Norway to the Kamchatka Peninsula as the most dangerous air directions to be kept an eye on.
Kornukov said Russia will put new air defense systems -- the first missile-and-anti-aircraft systems called "Triumph" -- into service in the Russian air forces this year.
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