I sometimes wonder if some of the responders to these stories actually read and process the whole picture. This was an airliner flown by a professional crew on an IFR flight plan in a part of the world where the nearest hot war is less than an hour’s flight away. The crew does not communicate with ATC before entering into a country’s airspace. Yes, they have to scramble the fighters to intercept this aircraft! It’s too bad it happened, but the response makes perfectly good sense to me.
And the captain did plead guilty. He knew.