Russia's rocket plan proves to be another dud

Latvia has asked for clarification on why airspace was shut down for a second time over a busy civil aviation sector of international airspace close to Latvia's sea border, for apparently no reason at all.

Speaking on LTV Friday morning, Defense Minister Raimonds Bergmanis said: "The main thing we want to achieve is information," and raised the possibility that the phantom saber-rattling might be part of a wider plan to lull people into a false sense of security or regard such bizarre and pointless behavior as normal practice.

He suggested that Russia, by doing this, is trying to lull the attention of Latvia from something else. "If this happens in the future, then certainly people's attention span will be worn out," Bergmanis said, immediately adding that Latvia will continue to observe any similar situations and report on them whether they seem real or bogus.

As previously reported by LSM, the Russian Chief Air Traffic Control Center informed the Latvian Civil Aviation Agency that the Russian Navy had reserved airspace from the 17th to 19th of April and planned to carry out rocket-firing in the airspace above Latvia's exclusive economic zone of the Baltic Sea in Latvia.

Russia's navy pulled the same stunt from 4 to 6 April, when it also failed to get anything up despite asking for airspace to be closed to a height of 18 kilometers.