SpaceWar.com reports: “Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said Friday.

From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea towards the southern Okinawa region, according to a defence ministry statement.

They then travelled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added.

The planes did not enter Japanese airspace but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official told AFP on Friday.

‘In response, we mobilised Air Self-Defence Force fighter jets on an emergency basis,’ the statement said.

The last time Russian military aircraft circled Japan was in 2019, the official said, but that incident involved bombers that did enter the nation’s airspace…”