Video footage shows the moment the RAF escorted two Russian Tu-95 Bear H strategic bombers off northern Scotland.
The Royal Air Force scrambled Typhoon fighters to monitor the warplanes yesterday amid high tension over fears Vladimir Putin will invade Ukraine.
The Russian footage highlights a mission that came soon after Boris Johnson ’s return from a visit to Kyiv and before his telephone talks with Putin when he warned the Kremlin leader that an attack on Ukraine would be a “tragic miscalculation”.
Both Tu-95s were accompanied by two Tu-142 maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare planes.
The RAF had announced it had ‘intercepted and escorted’ the four Russian ‘Bear’ aircraft in the UK ‘area of interest’.
The Russian probing mission did not enter UK airspace.
The super-loud Tu-95 is the only propeller-powered strategic bomber still in operational use today, and the plane first flew 70 years ago.
The Tu-95s had flown from Engels air base in Saratov region, with the Tu-142 flying from Kipelovo air base in Vologda region.
A Russian report said: “In the course of the flight, the crews of Tu-95 aircraft practiced aerial refuelling.
“The flight time was about 15 hours.
“At some stages of the route, the Russian strategic missile carriers were accompanied by Eurofighter Typhoon fighters of the British Air Force.”
New videos show the transit of Russian national guards - Rosgvardia - evidently towards the Ukrainian border - the first time they have been seen in the large troop movements.
The guards are an internal military force reporting directly to President Putin.
There has been speculation that they could be deployed as part of an occupying force in Ukraine.
Despite Kremlin denials of an invasion plan, its forces continue to arrive in Belarus and Russian regions close to Ukraine.
Russia’s advanced mobile S-400 Triumf surface-to-air missile system was seen arriving in Belarus.
A video shows Russian motorised riflemen on winter training being pulled by an BMP infantry fighting vehicle through snow on skis before shooting at a ‘mock’ enemy.
The Kremlin - which said relations with Britain were at “a very, very low ebb” - said Putin and Johnson held “a fairly detailed exchange of views in the context of the domestic Ukrainian crisis and the situation on ensuring long-term legally formalised security guarantees for the Russian Federation”.
Putin hit out at NATO's “reluctance to appropriately respond to Russia's justified concerns, while using as an excuse references to the alliance's so-called open door policy, which is at odds with the fundamental principle of indivisible security”.
