Kateryna Hirnyk11:02, 21.09.25

Russian pilots confirmed receiving the message from Italian F-35 fighter pilots, but ignored it and did not actually follow the signals.

Russian fighter pilots ignored signals from Italian fighter jets patrolling the country’s skies when they violated Estonian airspace , Colonel Ants Kiviselg told the Associated Press .

Russian MiG-31 fighter jets entered Estonian airspace between 9:58 and 10:10 local time on Friday in the area of ​​Vaindloo Island in the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, the Estonian military said, stressing that the violation was confirmed by radar and visual data.

Kiviselg noted that it still “needs to be confirmed” whether the border violation was intentional or not. In any case, he said, the Russian planes “should have known they were in (Estonian) airspace.”

At the same time, although they confirmed receiving a message from the Italian F-35 fighter pilots, they apparently ignored it and “actually did not follow the signals,” which partly explains their prolonged stay in Estonian airspace, he added.

“Why they didn’t do it is a question for the Russian pilots,” Kiviselg said.

The Russian planes took off from an airfield near Petrozavodsk in northwestern Russia and were headed for Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland. They were followed by two Finnish fighter jets, then escorted by two Italian planes that took off from the Estonian Emari air base and followed them into Estonian airspace, Kiviselg said.

Margus Tsahkna, Estonia’s foreign minister, told the Associated Press that the incident was “a very serious violation of NATO airspace.” The last time Estonian airspace was violated for so long was in 2003, he added, “just before Estonia joined NATO.”

(C)UNIAN 2025