Aviapedia

Su-27 fighter crashed in Lithuania

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) - A Russian Su-27 fighter bomber crashed in Lithuania Thursday after violating the NATO member’s airspace, prompting an investigation, Lithuanian officials said.

The pilot ejected safely before the plane crashed about 120 miles northwest of the capital while flying from St. Petersburg to Russia’s Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, the Defense Ministry said.

Defense Minister Gediminas Kirkilas said the prosecutor general’s office had begun an investigation, but added he believed the airspace violation was not intentional.

“According to information we have now, it was clearly an accident, not an attempt to attack strategic targets in Lithuania,” Kirkilas said.

The pilot, Maj. Valery Troyanov, was not injured, said Lithuanian air force chief Col. Romas Marcinkus. Troyanov, 36, was detained and taken to a police station in the nearby town of Jurbarkas.

Two NATO F-4 fighters took off from a nearby air base after the Russian plane entered Lithuanian airspace, but they did not reach the jet before it crashed, the ministry said. The Russian plane carried no ammunition and posed no danger.

“We had information that a group of Russian military planes will be flying through a neutral corridor near the Lithuanian border,” said Gen. Vladas Tutkus, the commander of the Lithuanian armed forces. “Our radars, which had been surveying that group, detected that one jet separated from others, flew into Lithuanian airspace minutes later and crashed into a field.”

Russian officials gave conflicting reports of why the jet had entered Lithuanian airspace.

A Russian Defense Ministry statement said the incident happened as a detachment of air force planes flew to the enclave of Kaliningrad, sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland. Kaliningrad is home to a major Russian military base.

A duty officer at the Defense Ministry in Moscow said the warplanes had agreed to a “corridor” for their flight across Lithuania.

The Russian Embassy in Vilnius has asked that the pilot be handed over to Russian officials, the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry said. Moscow has also asked for the Su-27’s flight recorder.

In May, Finland complained that Russian military aircraft had repeatedly violated its airspace for several months. The violations allegedly took place over the Gulf of Finland in the Baltic Sea as the fighter jets flew to and from Kaliningrad.

Similar alleged violations by Russian planes have been reported in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In November, the Estonian government filed an official complaint with Moscow, but said none was serious enough to merit intervention by the four NATO fighters that patrol the Baltics’ airspace.

Reported by Associated Press