In 2001 Air Defence Forces Registered Growth In Number Of Violations Of Russia's Air Space

The units on duty of the Russian Air Defence Forces have registered the growth in violations of the country's air space, including the violations by foreign spy planes. As Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Air Force, General of the Army Anatoly Kornukov told reporters on Friday, in 2001 over 150,000 air targets were discovered and followed - more than in the previous year. Out of this number, over seventy percent were foreign aircraft, including four thousand combat spy planes. According to Anatoly Kornukov, foreign planes violated the Russian state border seven times, and there were thirty violations of the use of the air space of the country. The greatest number of the violations occurred in the region of the Barents Sea, the Kola Peninsula (North) and the Kamchatka Peninsula (the Russian Far East), General Anatoly Kornukov said that in order to prevent a possible intrusion by the planes from neighbouring states into the air space of Russia the units of the antiaircraft rocket forces were put to top alert more than 120 times, the units of the radio technical forces - over two thousand times, and aviation crews - more than seven hundred times. The commander-in-chief also cited the data concerning air crashes in the country's Air Force in 2001. According to Kornukov, the Air Force has lost eight planes, 11 people died.