NATO fighter jets from three countries carried out refueling missions on Thursday in exercises linked to the alliance’s push to protect its eastern flank from Russia.

Two British Typhoon jets, four Swedish Gripen aircraft and two Finnish F/A-18s refueled from one of the U.K.’s Royal Air Force (RAF) Voyager tankers as it swept from the country's Brize Norton base in southern England northward, heading for the Baltic states before returning to British airspace via Poland.

Newsweek was aboard the Voyager, an adapted Airbus A330 300, as it skirted roughly 30 miles from Kaliningrad, Russia’s exclave sandwiched between NATO members Poland and Lithuania.

The bloc announced in September it would beef up its air presence along NATO's eastern edge, two days after roughly 20 Russian drones crosse

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