Finnish and Swedish fighter jets scrambled together for the first time on Sept. 24 to intercept Russian military aircraft over the Gulf of Finland.
Page A4From§Eachthe late evening edition — 27 September 2026
NATO scrambles jets to keep Russian planes out, invites Putin in for dinner
As it ran on the front
In November 2015, a Turkish F-16 put a Russian Su-24 into the hills near the Syrian border, the first time a NATO member had killed a Russian aircraft since the 1950s. One pilot was shot at by local fighters while he hung in his parachute and was found dead on the ground; the other pilot's fate was never confirmed after a rescue mission failed to reach the site. That was the doctrine, stated once and rarely tested since: cross into NATO airspace and you can be shot down.
Eleven years later the alliance is still finding out whether it means it. On September 14, NATO fighter jets shot down a drone over Lithuania. The president wouldn't name the owner out loud, but the defense ministry thanked the allies for the assist, and Russia was the country everyone in the room was thinking about without saying. Ten days later, on September 24, Finland and Sweden scrambled jets together for the first time in either country's history, sending F/A-18 Hornets and Gripens up after supersonic Russian aircraft over the Gulf of Finland — the first joint scramble since Sweden joined the alliance, proof the 2015 doctrine still gets used when the radar lights up.…
…(cont) And then, that same week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that Vladimir Putin is invited to Miami. The G20 Leaders' Summit meets there in December, and if Putin shows up in person it will be the first time he's sat at that table since he started the war his aircraft keep testing NATO's airspace over. Nobody at the State Department is claiming credit for the jets over the Gulf of Finland, and nobody scrambling those jets signed the invitation. They're different governments doing different jobs — Lithuania's ministry, the Finnish and Swedish air forces, the U.S. State Department — which is exactly the problem: nobody had to clear it with anybody else.
The alliance's answer to Moscow used to be one sentence: you get shot down. This month it's two sentences from two different desks that don't have to agree with each other, and one of them comes with a seating chart in Florida.
You don't get a discount on deterrence because the invitation went out on different letterhead. Either the border means something when the jets go up, or it doesn't, and the guest list is telling you which one the building actually believes.
“Every time Russia tests the fence, somebody scrambles a jet — Lithuania, Finland, Sweden, take your pick. Then the State Department turns around and sets a place at the table in Miami for the guy who's been ordering the flights. That's not two branches of the same government talking past each other, that's the whole alliance finding out deterrence and diplomacy don't check with each other before they open their mouths.”
“Look, scrambling jets and sending an invitation aren't contradictory — one's a defense posture, one's diplomacy, they're totally separate tracks. Rubio's not the one flying the Hornets, so — okay, that actually kind of proves the point I'm trying not to make. Different agencies, different mandates, it's called statecraft, and if it looks like nobody's talking to anybody else that's — huh, yeah, that's also what it looks like.”
The receipts
Trump promised he'd settle the war within 24 hours - 53 separate times, CNN counted CNN fact check, 25 April 2025 (all 53 instances)
US invites Putin to G20 summit in Miami for first time since Russia-Ukraine war beganSecretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the Trump administration invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Miami, Florida, in December. If Putin attends, it would be the first G20 Leaders’ Summit in person since he launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and began the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022.…
Finnish F/A-18 Hornets and Swedish Gripens scrambled jointly for the first time to intercept supersonic Russian military jets over the Gulf of Finland.
· NATO fighter jets shoot down drone in Lithuanian airspace, president says from the morgue, 14 Sep 2026
· Turkish F-16 fighter jets shoot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 aircraft that had allegedly infringed its airspace near the Syrian border. Russia's Ministry of Defence denies the Su-24 entered Turkish air from the morgue, 24 Nov 2015
· Denmark–Russia relations, Estonia–Russia relations, Italy–Russia relations, Latvia–Russia relations, Portugal–Russia relations, Romania–Russia relations, Russia–Slovenia relations, Russia–Spain relati from the morgue, 5 Apr 2022
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.