Russia’s ambassador to the UK was summoned to the Foreign Office on Thursday after two Russian bombers disrupted civilian air traffic over the English Channel. The RAF scrambled fighters to intercept them. The incident is the latest increasingly tense brush with Russian aircraft in the skies above Britain and other Nato-countries’ borders. It was also one of the most serious around British airspace so far, according to Whitehall officials. Russia’s ambassador, Alexander Yakovenko was last summoned by the Foreign Office in July over an incident involving the expulsion of a diplomat. He has not been called to account for increased Russian aerial activity by Britain before. The two huge Russian Tu-95 bombers, known by fighter pilots as bears, flew across one of the busiest civilian flightpaths in Europe and had their transponders turned off, meaning that they could only be detected by radar and would have been invisible on regular air traffic control systems. The UK’s air traffic controller, Nats, was forced to re-route commercial flights as a result. The decision was a “precautionary measure,” a government official said. The bombers — whose distinctive outline once made them one of the most recognisable symbols of the cold war — were initially intercepted by Norwegian fighters after taking off from Russia. They flew south from Norway over the North Sea towards UK airspace, continuing down the Channel and then along France’s Atlantic coast. Nato countries saw a threefold increase in provocative Russian activity in the skies last year. In Britain, RAF fighters have had to be scrambled once a month on average since tensions with Moscow began to rise. Jock Lowe, a former head of flight operations at British Airways, said the incident over the Channel this week was a marked departure from the tactics of the Soviet air force at the height of the cold war. In the 1970s and 1980s, Tu-95 long-range bombers would test UK air defence over the North Sea, often performing dummy bombing runs but they did not come as far south as the Channel. Despite a bulked-up Nato fighter mission in the Baltic and countries such as the UK being on a state of high alert for Russian incursions, the Kremlin has shown little indication that it will scale back its activities. President Vladimir Putin reinstated long-range patrols of nuclear-capable bombers in 2007 and has significantly increased the regularity and scale of their manoeuvres of late. 兩架俄羅斯轟炸機干擾英吉利海峽上空的民用航空交通後，英國外交部於週四召見俄羅斯駐英國大使。此前英國皇家空軍(RAF)命令戰鬥機緊急起飛對俄軍機予以攔截。 因俄羅斯飛機在英國以及其他北約(Nato)國家邊境上空的摩擦，地區局勢越發緊張，此次事件是最新的一例。 英國政府官員稱，這也是迄今爲止在英國領空附近發生的最嚴重事件之一。俄羅斯大使亞歷山大•雅科文科(Alexander Yakovenko)上一次被英國外交部召見是在去年7月，起因是一起驅逐外交官事件。此前他並未被要求就俄羅斯空中活動增多做出解釋。 這兩架巨型俄羅斯圖-95(Tu-95)轟炸機（北約戰鬥機飛行員稱其爲“熊”）飛越歐洲最繁忙的民用航空線路之一併關閉了應答器，這意味着，它們只能被雷達監測到，但不顯示在常規空中交通管制系統中。 英國空管機構Nats被迫因此更改民用航空航班的線路。一政府官員表示，這一決定是一種“預防措施”。 這兩架轟炸機的外形獨特，曾是冷戰時期最容易識別的標誌之一。這兩架轟炸機從俄羅斯起飛後，起初遭到挪威戰鬥機的攔截，然後它們從挪威向南飛行，越過北海飛向英國領空，並繼續飛向英吉利海峽，沿法國大西洋海岸飛行。 去年，俄羅斯在北約國家上空的挑釁行爲增加了3倍。自從與俄羅斯緊張關係開始加劇以來，英國皇家空軍戰鬥機不得不平均每月緊急起飛一次。 英國航空(British Airways)前飛行任務主管喬克•羅威(Jock Lowe)表示，本週發生在英吉利海峽上空的事件與前蘇聯空軍在冷戰白熱化時期的策略明顯不同。 上世紀70年代和80年代，圖-95遠程轟炸機會在北海上空測試英國的空中防禦，通常是進行模擬轟炸飛行，但從未飛到像英吉利海峽這麼靠南的地區。 儘管北約戰鬥機對俄羅斯入侵高度警惕，在巴爾幹半島和英國等國的任務增加，但俄羅斯幾乎沒有將減少此類活動的跡象。 俄羅斯總統弗拉基米爾•普京(Vladimir Putin)在2007年恢復了可攜帶核彈頭的轟炸機的遠程巡航，而且最近大大增加了此類巡航的頻率和規模。
