<p>HELSINKI — Estonia filed a protest with Moscow after a Russian aircraft allegedly violated the air space of the NATO ally and European Union member nation for the second time this year, the small Baltic nation’s military said Thursday. </p>
<p>An IL-96 plane belonging to Russia spent about one minute in Estonian airspace on Wednesday near the Baltic Sea island of Vaindloo, the military said.</p>
<p>The Russian plane’s transponder was on but the crew did not present a flight plan, according to Estonian authorities. The aircraft also failed to maintain radio contact with Estonian Air Navigation Services, the military said.</p>
<p>Russian Ambassador Alexander Petrov was summoned to the Estonian Foreign Ministry and officials presented him with a note about the alleged violation, calling it “a serious incident.” They said the repeated occurrence of such air space breaches were in “no way acceptable.”</p>
<p>Vaindloo, a small island that belongs to Estonia, is near a corridor where Russian planes – both civilian and military – fly from the St. Petersburg area to Kaliningrad, Russia’s Baltic Sea exclave located between Poland and Lithuania. </p>
<p>Estonia recorded several air violations by Russian planes around Vaindloo in past years and made repeated protests to Moscow. </p>
<p>Relations between Estonia and neighboring Russia have remained icy since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The two countries have yet to ratify a border treaty nearly 30 after Estonia, a former Soviet republic, regained its independence. </p>
