ŠIAULIAI AIR BASE, Lithuania (AP) — NATO intercepted Russian strategic bombers and fighter jets that flew over the Baltic Sea on Monday, a muscular display of air power on the alliance’s eastern flank away from the spotlight on the Middle East.
French Rafale fighters were deployed from a Lithuanian air base where they are stationed as part of a decades-long NATO air-policing effort. The fighters armed with air-to-air missiles joined jets from Sweden, Finland, Poland, Denmark and Romania. They all took to the skies to inspect and keep watch on the Russian flight, the French detachment said.
The Russian mission included two supersonic Tu-22M3s, as well as about 10 fighters — both Su-30s and Su-35s — that took turns escorting the larger strategic bombers, according to the statement.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the long-range bombers' flight was scheduled and occurred in airspace over the neutral waters of the Baltic Sea. The flight took more than four hours, the ministry said Monday on Telegram.
“At certain stages of the route, the long-range bombers were accompanied by fighters of foreign states,” the ministry said. “Crews of long-range aviation regularly conduct flights over the neutral waters of the Arctic, the North Atlantic, the Pacific Ocean, as well as the Baltic and Black Seas. All flights of Russian Aerospace Forces aircraft are carried out in strict compliance with international rules for the use of airspace.”
The ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. It often reports flights by its strategic bombers over the Baltic Sea, including in January — when NATO jets also flew up to meet them — and at least four times last year.
NATO’s Allied Air Command also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
The military alliance routinely scrambles fighter aircraft to intercept Russian warplanes that approach or fly near NATO airspace. NATO says the Russian planes it intercepts often fail to use their transponders and don't communicate with air traffic controllers or file a flight plan. NATO jets are sent up to identify them.
Many of the Russian flights that NATO monitors with its Baltic air policing mission, in place since Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia joined the alliance in 2004, are to and from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Even before the war in Ukraine, NATO was intercepting Russian planes around 300 times each year, mostly over waters around northern Europe.
A journalist from The Associated Press witnessed the French detachment's response on Monday from the sprawling Šiauliai Air Base in Lithuania. NATO uses the base for fighter patrols that police the skies on the alliance’s eastern flank.
Two French Rafale fighter jets’ two-man crews — a pilot and a navigator — were seen racing in two vans to the planes’ hangars from the headquarters building the French detachment uses during its four-month deployment on the air base.
The crews were already suited up because they’d been on standby, so they would be ready to take to the air within minutes if scrambled.
The two crews quickly took their places in their planes’ cockpits. They were then put on hold, with the planes’ jet engines ignited, until they got the order to take off. Then they taxied out of their hangars and roared off into the clear skies.
Monday's flight was the latest in Russia's maneuvers over the Baltic Sea.
Lithuania's defense ministry said NATO jets were scrambled four times from April 13-19 to intercept Russian aircraft that violated flight rules that included turning off flight transponders and flying without a flight plan.
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Stefanie Dazio in Berlin and Kostya Manenkov in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.
In this photo, provided by the French Army on Monday, April 20, 2026, a Russian supersonic Tu-22M3 strategic bomber flies over the Baltic Sea. (Etat-Major des Armees via AP)
In this photo, provided by the French Army on Monday, April 20, 2026, a Russian Su-35 fighter jet flies over the Baltic Sea. (Etat-Major des Armees via AP)
LONDON (AP) — Britain looks set to get a change of tone at the top, replacing stolid, unpopular Prime Minister Keir Starmer with popular, affable Andy Burnham.
But the charismatic Burnham may have difficulty — at least initially — distancing himself from policies set in motion by his predecessor.
Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester who was sworn into Parliament hours after Starmer announced his resignation on Monday, will be constrained by the platform the center-left Labour Party was elected on that decisively ended 14 years of Conservative rule in 2024.
It's not entirely clear how he'll navigate those limits and bring his unique brand of politics to the revolving-door post that would make him the 7th prime minister in a decade. He’ll lay out his economic vision in a speech next week.
“At the moment, Andy Burnham is being almost hailed and held up as a folk hero that will save British politics,” said Matthew Flinders, politics professor at University of Sheffield. “The tide is changing and the big issue for Andy Burnham is that when the world suddenly moves against him and he becomes a folk devil, will he sustain the pressure?”
Burnham is currently the only contestant for the job of leading the Labour Party and the country, and will likely take over July 17 if no one else enters the race. His return to the House of Commons follows a decade leading the region around the U.K.’s third-largest city, birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, which has enjoyed an economic revival during his tenure.
His main challenge will be to overcome Starmer's inability to deliver promised economic growth, repair tattered public services and ease the cost of living.
Burnham highlighted those issues — along with housing and creating opportunities for young people — in a post on social media after Starmer said he was quitting.
“The country expects stability, seriousness and a continued focus on the issues that matter most and that is what it will get,” he said on X.
Burnham, who is widely regarded as sitting to the left of Starmer in the party, has said he'll revive a sluggish economy without going beyond the current government’s spending and borrowing plans. That pledge has helped reassure markets traumatized in 2022 after Prime Minister Liz Truss announced unfunded tax cuts and then withdrew them, leading to her 49-day record as Britain's shortest-serving leader.
“If you are a Labour prime minister from the soft left of the party, the markets don’t need that much invitation to panic,” said Mark Goodwin, a politics lecturer at Coventry University. “They will start from a position of skepticism. So he’d have to be very, very careful."
He said Burnham will face a challenge “to convince people that this is something different, without the markets reading that as ‘This is too different.’"
Burnham promotes what has been called “Manchesterism,” a business-friendly socialist approach that involves harnessing private investment for major projects and decentralizing government to give communities more control of housing, utilities, transportation and education.
In a possible preview of how he would move power from the capital, he is reportedly planning to move some of the prime minister’s operation closer to home, about 200 miles north of 10 Downing St., the London office and home of the U.K.’s leader.
He has said he would not raise taxes on workers — sticking to a Starmer pledge — and suggested policies that include easing the tax burden on businesses, and possibly reversing an increase in a tax employers pay to fund pensions, public health care and welfare.
The big question is how he will fund programs, if he'll scrap existing priorities, and how he'll meet demands for higher defense spending, said Jill Rutter, senior fellow at the Institute for Government think tank.
Starmer's government pledged to meet a NATO target of spending 3.5% of GDP on the military by 2035. But John Healey stepped down as defense secretary this month after complaining that Starmer was not moving fast enough to meet the target.
Burnham's lack of experience on the world stage could present a challenge improving the so-called special relationship with the U.S. after President Donald Trump turned on Starmer.
Trump described Burnham this week as a “town” mayor and said he heard he was “extremely liberal” and probably wouldn't expand North Sea oil drilling — one of his frequent gripes about Starmer.
Starmer made a priority of forging cordial ties with Trump despite their political differences, and was rewarded with a U.S.-U.K. trade deal. But it came at the cost of angering some in Labour's liberal voter base, and the president soured on Starmer after the British leader criticized his designs on Greenland and declined to enter the Iran war.
Burnham has not always said nice things about Trump. After Trump's followers stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Burnham posted on X that "any politician who gave Trump the time of day should be ashamed right now.”
Starmer won praise from many for his international role, especially in bolstering European support for Ukraine. But he was criticized by some for being distracted by foreign affairs, Rutter said. She doesn't expect the same from Burnham and he could farm out some of those duties by choosing an experienced hand as foreign secretary, the U.K.'s top diplomat.
"I don’t think Andy Burnham will want to be ‘never-here Andy’ in succession to ‘never-here Keir,’” Rutter said in reference to Starmer's globetrotting moniker.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said on Wednesday that she spoke with Burnham about policy issues and said “he’s 100% behind our unwavering support for Ukraine” and ”is a fundamental believer in NATO and in our shared deterrence and in the multilateral partnerships that we have."
An early priority for Burnham will be something Starmer struggled with: crafting a clear and convincing narrative that people understand about the direction he wants to take the country, Flinders said.
That plays to Burnham's communications skills and the popularity he has achieved by presenting himself as an amiable northern everyman who favors T-shirts over suits and ties, plays soccer for kicks and is known for spinning 1990s tunes during DJ battles.
So far, he has played it safe and tried not to raise public expectations too high. But if he can prove himself to be a competent leader and win public support to survive the remaining three years before a general election must be held, he can lay out a bolder vision for another term in his own manifesto.
Burnham has spoken of reshaping the political system, such as replacing the House of Lords with an elected senate and introducing proportional representation in voting. He also said he'd like to see the U.K. rejoin the European Union in his lifetime, though he backed away from that during his campaign in a constituency that voted 2-to-1 in favor of Brexit.
“My sense is that he will take some time, sensibly, to build up his team, his narrative, his story and his connections in order to then try to secure a public mandate and the next general election to then approach the more radical phase that he wants to deliver, which is exactly what Margaret Thatcher did in the '80s,” Flinders said.
Andy Burnham arrives at Portcullis House in Westminster, central London, Monday June 22, 2026. (Andrew Matthews/PA via AP)
Andy Burnham, front left, is sworn-in as an MP in the House of Common in London, England, Monday, June 22, 2026. (House of Commons via AP)
FILE - Labour candidate Andy Burnham gestures, surrounded by supporters at the Stubshaw Cross Community and Sports Club as voting is underway in the Makerfield by-election, in Ashton-in-Makerfield, England, Thursday, June 18, 2026. (Peter Byrne/PA via AP, file)
Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks to the media outside 10 Downing Street to announce his resignation in London, Monday, June 22, 2026.(AP Photo/Thomas Krych)
Andy Burnham with colleagues from the Parliamentary Labour Party in Westminster Hall at the Houses of Parliament in central London, as he returns to the House of Commons to take up his seat after winning the Makerfield by-election, Monday June 22, 2026. (Yui Mok/PA via AP)
