On Sunday a navy vessel identified as the tugboat and supply ship Irgiz was sighted just 5 nautical miles (10 kilometers) off of Latvia's maritime border in its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) waters.
Armed Forces on 30 NOV in LV EEZ 5 nmi from territ. waters spotted RU Navy's support ship Irgiz.
— NBS (@Latvijas_armija) November 30, 2014
This followed a tweet the previous day reporting the scrambling of Baltic Air Police (BAP) fighter jets to meet up with another Russian air force reconnaissance plane Ilyushin IL-20 that was very near Latvia's airspace over the Baltic sea.
NATO Baltic Air Policing QRA F-16 jets on 29 NOV scrambled to intercept RU Armed Forces IL-20 over the Baltic Sea.
— NBS (@Latvijas_armija) November 29, 2014
The current tally of spotting incidents involving Russian military aircraft and sea vessels on the part of Latvia's NBS so far this year now exceeds 250, 50 of the cases being ships seen near Latvia's maritime borders and more than 200 scramblings of the BAP to intercept planes near Latvian skies over the Baltic, the Defense Ministry told LETA Monday morning.
The NBS tweets regularly to the public regarding its monitoring of Russian military activities near Latvia's frontiers. Russia has demonstrated a broad array of its armament and equipment, including destroyers, transport planes, spy planes, command planes, bombers, helicopters, frigates, corvettes, submarines and their support ships, as well as transport ships.
