A disaster of massive proportions was prevented in March when a Scandinavian airliner and a Russian warplane came within 90 meters (300 feet) of each other in the air, a study of Russia-West military incidents said Monday.
On March 3, Scandinavian Airlines Boeing 737, carrying 132 passengers from Copenhagen to Rome, nearly crashed into a covertly flying Russian warplane about 50 miles southeast of the Swedish city of Malmo, Agence France Presse reported.
"A collision was apparently avoided thanks only to good visibility and the alertness of the passenger plane pilots," the European Leadership Network (ELN) think-tank's report said.
Citing comparisons to the tragedy of flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine, the report "Dangerous Brinkmanship: Close Military Encounters Between Russia and the West in 2014" stated that the incident was narrowly avoided even though the Russian reconnaissance plane "did not transmit its position," according to Deutsche Welle.
Back in July, the Boeing 777-200 crashed while flying over a part of eastern Ukraine near the Russian border that is essentially a war zone between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists. All 283 passengers and 15 crew members were killed.
Out of a total of 45 reported incidents this year, almost all of them involved air and naval war games in different parts of the world including the Pacific, according to the report.
"The SAS incident was classified as 'high risk,' along with two others: the alleged abduction of an Estonian security service operative by Russian agents from an Estonian border post on September 5 and the reports of 'foreign underwater activity' off the Swedish coast last month," according to AFP.
Additionally, the study counted 11 "serious incidents with escalation risk" including four cases of "harassment" of U.S. and Swedish planes in international airspace by armed Russian fighter jets.
Over the weekend, Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev warned that tensions between the major powers will push the world "on the brink of a new Cold War" at an event marking the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
"The world is on the brink of a new Cold War. Some are even saying that it's already begun," Gorbachev, whose perestroika and glasnost reforms helped pave the way for the Wall's fall, said while attending three days of festivities in the German capital to mark the event.
Specifically, he described the breakdown in communications between major world powers as "of enormous concern," blamed recent violence in the Middle East and Europe for today's increased tensions, and urged Russia and Europe to settle their differences over Ukraine, the Associated Press reported.
"Let us remember that there can be no security in Europe without German-Russian partnership," he said in an interview with Switzerland's RTS radio and TV network. "One sees new walls. In Ukraine, it's an enormous ditch that they want to dig."
