A Russian fighter jet struck the propeller of a U.S. surveillance drone over the Black Sea on Tuesday, causing the drone to crash, the United States military said.
State Department spokesman Ned Price called it a “brazen violation of international law.”
He said the U.S. summoned the Russian ambassador to lodge a protest and the U.S. ambassador to Russia, Lynne Tracy, has made similar representations in Moscow.
US European Command said two Russian Su-27 fighters intercepted the unmanned MQ-9 Reaper over international waters and one clipped its propeller.
“Several times before the collision, the Su-27s dumped fuel on and flew in front of the MQ-9 in a reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner,” it said.
The statement confirmed an earlier report by AFP of an incident involving a US-made drone in the area.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the U.S. drone was flying over the Black Sea near Crimea and intruded in the area that was declared off limits by Russia as part of what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine, causing the military to scramble fighters to intercept it.
“As a result of sharp maneuver, the MQ-9 drone went into uncontrollable flight with a loss of altitude and crashed into water,” it said.
“The Russian fighters didn’t use their weapons or impact the unmanned aerial vehicle, and they safely returned to their base.”
Moscow has repeatedly voiced concern about U.S. intelligence flights close to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
The Kremlin has charged that by providing weapons to Ukraine and sharing intelligence information with Kyiv, the U.S. and its allies have effectively become engaged in the conflict.
U.S. President Joe Biden was briefed on the incident by national security adviser Jake Sullivan, according to White House National Security spokesman John Kirby.
He added that U.S. State Department officials would be speaking directly with their Russian counterparts and “expressing our concerns over this unsafe and unprofessional intercept.”
Kirby emphasized that the incident wouldn’t deter the U.S. from continuing their missions in the area.
“If the message is that they want to deter or dissuade us from flying, and operating in international airspace, over the Black Sea, then that message will fail,” Kirby said, adding “that is not going to happen.”
“We’re going to continue to fly and operate in international airspace over international waters,” he said. “The Black Sea belongs to no one nation.”
NATO diplomats in Brussels confirmed the incident, but said they did not expect it to immediately escalate into a further confrontation.
A Western military source, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said that diplomatic channels between Russia and the United States could help limit any fall-out.
“To my mind, diplomatic channels will mitigate this,” the source said.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year has led to heightened fears of a direct confrontation between Moscow and the Western NATO military alliance, which has been arming Kyiv to help it defend itself.
News of a missile strike in eastern Poland in November last year briefly caused alarm before Western military sources concluded that it was a Ukrainian air defence missile that had malfunctioned, not a Russian one.
There was no immediate reaction from Moscow.
AFP
