Estonia said on Thursday that Moscow had briefly sent a fighter jet into NATO airspace over the Baltic Sea during an attempt to stop a Russian-bound oil tanker thought to be part of a shadow fleet defying Western sanctions on Moscow.

Russia deployed a fighter jet in Nato airspace this week after Estonia tried to inspect a so-called shadow fleet tanker passing the EU-member’s economic area, Estonia’s foreign minister Margus Tsahkna said.

The Estonian navy escorted the tanker "Jaguar" from the Russian shadow fleet. "To avoid any threat to Estonia's underwater infrastructure, the ship was escorted out of Estonian waters to Russian waters,