SEVEROMORSK. Feb 1 (Interfax-Northwest) - Last year, the frequency of NATO reconnaissance flights near Russia's Kola Peninsula increased 20%, as compared with the year before.
Lieutenant General Sergei Rozygrayev, commander of the Kola air defense unit, told Interfax that in 2001, the unit identified and rated 21,104 targets, 11,350 of which were foreign planes, among them 372 combat and reconnaissance jets of NATO countries.
Radio-technical units of the air defense were put on high alert 364 times, fighter aviation 121 times and surface-to-air missile units three times, Rozygrayev said.
Besides, the Russian border was violated four times by automatic drifting aerostats of Finnish meteorological services.