Belgrade: NATO Warplanes Again Shadowed Air Serbia Passenger Flight From Russia

Editor’s note: Even inside Russian airspace supposedly. Is Vučić making this all up to justify his servile ways? Or maybe it happened, but in Lithuania, and not in Russia. The second would be a lot more believable.

Source: Tanjug

An Air Serbia passenger jet en route from St Petersburg to Belgrade was followed by Belgian NATO warplanes on Friday while flying over Lithuania, Belgrade media reported.

According to Vecernje novosti, the JU 671 flight landed safely at the Belgrade airport at 1.50 pm.

This is the second such case in just days.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said late on Thursday Russian air traffic control had informed its Serbian counterpart on Wednesday that a NATO warplane had followed an Air Serbia jet in Russian airspace, not far from Russia’s border with Latvia.

The passenger aircraft was flying from Moscow to Belgrade, Vucic said in an interview for the RTS.

“Tomorrow the government will send a request for additional information from the Russians, but we will also request information from NATO to see who was trying to be the smart guy and with what fighter planes they were endangering civil aviation and civilians on a flight, and to see why they were playing the smart guys, or it was just a coincidence,” Vucic said.

He said the NATO plane – most reminiscent of an F-15 or a Eurofighter – had been flying just a kilometre below the Air Serbia jet in Russian airspace.

He said Serbia had the exact coordinates where the warplane had appeared.

“I am saying this so that you understand the extent of the pressure we are facing, as Serbia is the only country that has kept flights to Moscow and St Petersburg at the same level,” he told the interviewer.

“I do not quite recall Kiev-London, Kiev-Budapest or Kiev-Vienna flights being halted when NATO was bombing Serbia,” Vucic added ironically.

Source: Aerotime

Vucic read out what he said was a report from a pilot on the flight: “Not far from the Russian-Latvian border, Russian Air Traffic Control sent us traffic information to warn us about an aircraft nearby. Two minutes later they asked us to visually identify the aircraft.” Vucic said. “The plane in question. It was a military fighter jet. It resembled the “Phantom 15” or the Eurofighter the most, gray in color.”

Vucic continued from the report: “It [the jet] went from left to right, but without endangering the safety of our plane. Then it quickly disappeared from sight.”

“Apparently, it was a NATO aircraft in Russian airspace only a kilometer below [the Air Serbia aircraft]. And the Russian flight controller correctly informed us that there was another airplane nearby, and asked to check what kind of airplane it is, because how are they going to shoot that airplane when there are passengers above it.”.