MOSCOW. Feb 29 (Interfax-AVN) -- The Russian Air Force Command is assured that NATO's AWACS flights along Russian borders had reconnaissance goals.
"We have no doubt that the AWACS was not only making demonstrative flights, but also conducting reconnaissance of Russian and Belarussian territories," a high-ranking Air Force official told Interfax-Military News Agency on Thursday.
"The plane's technical assets enabled it to cover Russia's Smolensk, Tver, Novgorod, Leningrad, Arkhangelsk, Bryansk and Moscow regions, as well as the Minsk, Mogilev, Vitebsk, Gomel and Grodno regions of Belarus," the official said.
"The spy plane examined a total of about 500 strategic facilities on the territory of two countries," he argued.
The official recalled that the AWACS made similar demonstrative flights along Russia's southern borders in 2003.
"If these flights are made in the framework of the Partnership for Peace program, why don't they use Russian specialists and Russian hardware for these purposes? Our aircraft and our experts in this field are by far superior to Western ones, of which we will soon make sure," he said.
The AWACS plane made a flight over Latvia from 5:30 p.m. to 7:20 p.m. Moscow time (1430 to 1630 GMT) on Monday. It was flying at an altitude of 8,000 to 10,000 meters at a speed of 750kmph. The plane covered a distance of 1,300km.
The AWACS flight over Lithuania took place from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. Moscow time (0900 to 1100 GMT) on Wednesday. The plane flew at an altitude of 8,000-9,000m at a speed of 700kmph, covering a total of about 2,000km.
Also on Wednesday, the second AWACS plane made a flight over Poland.