MOSCOW. Aug 1 (Interfax) - Russia is ready to take measures to ensure the safety of military aviation flights over the Baltic Sea, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
"As a priority task in this sphere, the Russian Defense Ministry considers readiness on the basis of mutuality to ensure military aviation flights over the Baltic only with transponders on. For that purpose, experts from NATO and the Baltic states, which are not included in the alliance, have been invited to Moscow for consultations and work on coordinated measures to implement this initiative by Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov told reporters on Monday.
"The military attaches are informed about the proposal to conduct an overview of the military programs that previously existed in the format of the NATO-Russia Council. Specifically, it was stated that resumption of the NATO-Russia Council Cooperative Airspace Initiative would promote aviation flight safety," he said.
Antonov also said that Russia is ready "for the joint work of precluding incidents at sea and in the air under bilateral agreements in this sphere, as well as for consultations with the defense ministries of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Sweden and Finland to address mutual concerns over military activity in border areas."
At a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 1 the Finnish president suggested that military aircraft have their transponders on when flying over the Baltics.
Putin agreed with Niinisto's proposal to ban flights over the Baltic region with switched-off transponders and said he will tell the Foreign and Defense Ministries to include this matter in the agenda of the upcoming NATO-Russia- Council meeting.