MOSCOW, August 17. /TASS/. In the wake of a British spy plane’s flight over the Barents Sea Moscow urges London not to create an artificial hotbed of tensions in the Arctic, Russia’s charge d’affairs in London, Alexander Gusarov, said on the Rossiya-24 round-the-clock television news channel on Wednesday.
"We urge our British counterparts not to follow this risky path and to avoid creating, for no apparent reason, an artificial hotbed of tensions in the Arctic, a region that has been declared an area of peace and cooperation," he said.
Gusarov stressed that the plane’s flight was a premeditated and intentional provocation aimed at hacking Russia’s defenses.
On August 15, the Russian Defense Ministry said that Britain’s radio-technical reconnaissance and radio-electronic warfare plane RC-135 had violated Russia’s state border near Cape Svyatoy Nos over the Barents Sea. A MiG-31BM fighter forced the intruder out of Russia’s airspace.