Russia is pursuing a “highly disturbing” military strategy resulting in almost 40 dangerously close encounters with Nato forces and civilian aircraft in just eight months, according to a new report.

London-based thinktank the European Leadership Network (ELN) said Cold War-style “brinkmanship” by Vladimir Putin’s air force was creating the risk of military escalation across the continent.

The intensity and gravity of incidents involving Russian and Western military and security agencies has increased since the annexation of Crimea in March, the report found.

It listed near-misses including violations of national airspace, emergency scrambles, narrowly avoided mid-air collisions, close encounters at sea and simulated bombing attacks stretching from the North Sea to the Baltic and Arctic regions and along the US coast.

Finland's President warned that Europe was being pushed to the brink of a "new kind of Cold War" in the wake of the incursions.

Three incidents were classified “high-risk”, including a narrowly avoided collision between a civilian Scandinavian Airlines flight taking off from Copenhagen on 3 March and a Russian plane.

The Boeing 737, heading to Rome with 132 passengers on board, came within 90 metres of a Russian reconnaissance aircraft which was not transmitting its position.

Another incident chronicled in the report saw Russian bomber aircraft practicing what researchers claimed were simulated cruise missile strikes against the US in the Labrador Sea, near Canada, in September.

Online Editors