Located only 200 km from NATO-members Finland and Norway, Olenya Air Base is closely watched by military analysts. The 3,500 m runway normally serves a small fleet of elderly Tu-22M supersonic bombers and a few An-12 military transport planes.
Last autumn, however, the role of the air base as a forward deployment field for long-range aviation was activated.
The first four Tu-160 strategic bombers came in August and by October there were more than ten Tu-95 and Tu-160 aircraft deployed, as previously reported by the Barents Observer. Sending such heavy bombers north “is certainly signaling,” said Professor Katarzyna Zysk with the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies.
The strategic bombers now deployed inside the Arctic Circle were previously based at Engels near the city of Saratov. Located only 600 km from the border with Ukraine, the air base proved vulnerable when two of the TU-95 planes were damaged after what was believed to be a drone attack last December. […]
This week’s new satellite photo from Olenya clearly indicates that Russia’s strategic aviation forces flew north for more than a short-term evacuation away from the Ukrainian neighborhood. Läs artikel