2 Russian aircraft suspected of violating Finland's airspace

 Two Russian military aircraft are suspected of having violated Finland's airspace close to its capital city of Helsinki, Finland’s defense ministry said Tuesday.

The ministry said in a brief statement that two Russian Su-27 fighter jets allegedly violated Finland’s airspace over the Gulf of Finland, near Helsinki, at around 2 p.m. local time (1100 GMT), Tuesday afternoon.

The Finnish Border Guard is investigating the incident.

Defense Ministry spokeswoman Nina Hyrsky told the Finnish news agency STT that Finnish Air Force F-18 jets were scrambled to intercept the Russian aircraft.

She told STT that the violation is suspected to have lasted about two minutes, and that the planes crossed about half a kilometer (0.3 miles) into Finnish airspace. Finland is not a member of NATO.

The Su-27 is a combat aircraft widely used by the Russian military to fly from mainland Russia to the nation’s Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad, sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania. The route passes a narrow international air corridor over the Gulf of Finland.