The other day the Russian government issued a decree on the procedure for the use of weapons and military equipment while protecting the state border of the Russian Federation in airspace. The main sensational thesis of the document is permission to shoot down a passenger plane that is trying to enter the airspace of Russia, but only as a last resort, when there is a real threat of an environmental catastrophe or an act of terrorism.
According to some experts, the extreme case can only be this - the intruder is flying with disabled state recognition systems, does not make radio contact, does not respond to light signals or gestures of crews of air defense fighter on duty. And only after such a malicious ignore, combat vehicles will be allowed to open a warning fire: to release several bursts of tracer shells. If this is not enough, and besides, the intruder is moving, for example, towards the city, a nuclear power plant or a chemical enterprise - then the question will be raised about the use of weapons to kill.
What is especially significant, if there is no real threat of a passenger liner falling on a particularly important or dangerous object, then the fighters will not shoot, but will continue to try to land the intruder. The same applies to captured Russian aircraft.
But this only applies to civilian aircraft. If an armed military plane or a drone of another state invades the Russian airspace, it will be destroyed if it refuses to obey the commands of the air defense forces.
