Associated Press,
VILNIUS, Lithuania: A Russian Su-27 fighter bomber crashed in Lithuania Thursday after violating the NATO member's airspace, prompting an investigation, Lithuanian officials said.
The crash, about 190 kilometers northwest of Vilnius, occurred during a flight from St. Petersburg to Russia's Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, the Lithuanian Defense Ministry said.
Defense Minister Gediminas Kirkilas said the Prosecutor General's Office had begun an investigation, but added he believed the airspace violation was not intentional.
“According to information we have now, it was clearly an accident, not an attempt to attack strategic targets in Lithuania,” Kirkilas said.
The Russian pilot, Major Valery Troyanov, ejected from the aircraft safely and was not injured, the Lithuanian Air Force chief, Colonel Romas Marcinkus said. Troyanov, 36, was detained and taken to a police station in the nearby town of Jurbarkas.
Two NATO F-4 fighters took off from a nearby air base after the Russian plane entered Lithuanian air space but did not reach the jet before it crashed, the ministry said. The Russian plane carried no ammunition and posed no danger.
“We had information that a group of Russian military planes would be flying through a neutral corridor near the Lithuanian border,” said General Vladas Tutkus, commander of the Lithuanian armed forces. “Our radars, which had been surveying that group, detected that one jet separated from others, flew into Lithuanian airspace minutes later and crashed into a field.”
The Lithuanian army sealed the crash site and began investigating the plane's remains, Tutkus said.
People in the village of Ploksciai, near where the plane crashed, watched as Lithuanian army and NATO officials investigated the site. NATO fighters circled over the field, guarded by heavily armed Lithuanian troops.
“We heard a plane roar and then a blast,” said villager Laima Miliuniene. “It crashed into the field … but there was no big fire. Military officials soon appeared and surrounded the area.”
Russian officials gave conflicting reports of why the jet had entered Lithuanian airspace. A Defense Ministry statement said the incident happened as a detachment of Air Force planes flew to Kaliningrad, which is home to a Russian military base. A duty officer at the Defense Ministry in Moscow said the warplanes had agreed to fly along a “corridor” for their flight across Lithuania.
The Russian Embassy in Vilnius has requested the pilot be handed over to Russian officials, the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry said. Moscow has also asked for the flight recorder, or the black boxes, of the Su-27.
In May, Finland complained that Russian military aircraft had repeatedly violated its airspace during over several months. The violations allegedly took place in Finnish airspace over the Gulf of Finland in the Baltic Sea as the fighter jets flew to and from Kaliningrad.
