NATO aircraft spied on Russia from Norway

 

TT-NTB

Published 21.51

  

A fighter jet takes off from Ørlandet air base during the international military exercise Cold Response in March. Archive photo. Photo: Jan Langhaug/NTB

For the first time since the 1950s, a Norwegian air base has been used as a base for espionage against the Russian Kola Peninsula.

The long-standing practice was broken on Tuesday and Thursday last week when a British RC-135W spy plane took off from Ørlandet air base and then circled in international airspace off the Kola Peninsula, writes Aftenposten.

Norway has previously banned NATO aircraft from flying over Northern Norway during operations in the strategically important sea areas north of the Kola Peninsula and west of the Russian archipelago of Novaya Zemlya. The justification for this has been that Norway wants to avoid acting provocatively in an area where Russia has a heavy weapons arsenal.