Report warns of Russian aggression A Scandinavian passenger jet heading for Rome lifts off from Copenhagen with 132 passengers on board. Only the alertness of its crew prevents a midair collision with a Russian surveillance plane that had not transmitted its position. In the waters of the Stockholm archipelago, a Swedish commander threatens to use armed force in response to the unauthorized presence of at least one underwater vessel, provoking "the biggest anti-submarine operation in Sweden since the Cold War." Mockingly, Russia denies involvement. The episodes were chronicled Monday in a report by a British nonprofit research organization, the European Leadership Network, which recorded almost 40 incidents in the past eight months involving Russian forces in a "volatile standoff" with the West that "could prove catastrophic at worst." The incidents were all said to have taken place since Russia's annexation of Crimea in March. "These events," the report said, "add up to a highly disturbing picture of violations of national airspace, emergency scrambles, narrowly avoided midair collisions, close encounters at sea, simulated attack runs and other dangerous actions happening on a regular basis over a very wide geographical area." The findings seemed to add weight to remarks last weekend by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, at an event in Berlin for the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. "Bloodshed in Europe and the Middle East against the backdrop of a breakdown in dialogue between the major powers is of enormous concern," Mr. Gorbachev said at the Brandenburg Gate in the German capital where President Ronald Reagan once urged him to "tear down this wall." "The world is on the brink of a new Cold War," Mr. Gorbachev said. Some are even saying that it's already begun. While it does not use quite the same language, the report on Monday said that "to perpetuate a volatile standoff between a nuclear armed state and a nuclear armed alliance and its partners in the circumstances described in this paper is risky at best. ... It could prove catastrophic at worst." The report traced a turning point in the number and gravity of incidents involving Russian forces to March. By October, it said, NATO officials had already reported three times as many intercepts of Russian aircraft as in all of 2013. Those included a close encounter on June 17, when warplanes of the British Royal Air Force were scrambled in response to the presence of "multiple Russian aircraft in international airspace." The incidents recalled encounters during the Cold War, when Russian long-range bombers routinely inspected Western defences and when the United States and its NATO allies just as frequently conducted surveillance and exploratory flights along the Soviet periphery. In the report, the European Leadership Network said the episodes had brought "a higher level risk of escalation" from manoeuvers, including "harassment of reconnaissance planes, close overflights over warships, and Russian "mock bombing raid" missions." But it singled out three episodes, including the close call with the Scandinavian passenger jet and the reported presence of a submarine off Sweden, as the events "carried a high probability of causing casualties or a direct military confrontation." The third episode, it said, was the abduction of an Estonian intelligence officer in September, immediately after President Barack Obama visited the region and repeated U.S. security assurances to the Baltic states. The report concluded by urging leaders in Russia to "re-evaluate the costs and risks of continuing its more assertive military posture," and it said that Western diplomats should encourage Moscow to do so. It also called for both sides to improve communications and to "exercise military and political restraint."