MOSCOW (Dispatches) - Russian and Chinese strategic warplanes, including Tupolev-95 long-range “Bear” bombers, conducted joint patrols over the Sea of Japan and East China Sea, the Russian defense ministry said on Wednesday.
“An air group consisting of Tu-95MC strategic missile carriers of the Russian Aerospace Forces and strategic bombers XIAN H-6K of the PLA Air Force carried out air patrols over the waters of the Japanese and East China Seas,” the ministry said.
It said Russian and Chinese aircraft “acted strictly in accordance with the provisions of international law” and that no foreign airspace was violated.
It was the first time that Russia and Chinese military aircraft landed in each other’s airfields as part of a joint air patrol, the ministry said.
The Tupolev Tu-95, known by NATO as “Bear”, along with the Tu-160, is the backbone of Russia’s long-range air attack nuclear forces. It was designed to drop nuclear bombs on the United States in the Cold War.

South Korea Scrambles Jets

On Wednesday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it scrambled fighter jets as Chinese and Russian warplanes entered its air defense zone.
Fighter jets were scrambled as two Chinese and six Russian warplanes entered the country’s air defense zone,
The Chinese H-6 bombers repeatedly entered and left the Korea Air Defense Identification Zone (KADIZ) off South Korea’s southern and northeast coasts starting at around 5:50am (2050 GMT Tuesday), the JCS said.
They re-entered the zone hours later from the Sea of Japan, known in Korea as the East Sea, joined by the Russian warplanes, including TU-95 bombers and SU-35 fighter jets, the JCS added.
The aircraft did not violate South Korea’s airspace, the JCS noted.
An air defense identification zone (ADIZ) is the airspace of a country plus an additional wider area over land and water in which a country tries to identify, locate, and control any civil aircraft in the interest of its national security. They are declared unilaterally by each country and are not recognized by any international treaty.
In a similar occurrence, U.S. fighters earlier intercepted two Russian bombers in the international airspace close to the northern U.S. state of Alaska.