Russia has admonished the United States of America to keep away from its air space, after a U.S. drone intercepted by Russian jets crashed into the Black Sea. This is the first known direct confrontation between the superpowers since Russia invaded, the first known direct confrontation between the superpowers since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Washington and Moscow traded blame for the incident, which took place in international air space near territory Russia claims to have annexed from Ukraine. Moscow called it proof that the United States was directly participating in the war; Washington called it an act of Russian recklessness.
Russia said it would try to recover the drone wreckage from the sea. Washington said it might never be recovered, and steps had been taken to ensure Russia could not gain intelligence from the wreckage.
The U.S. military said two Russian Su-27 fighter planes had approached one of its MQ-9 Reaper drones on a reconnaissance mission over international waters. The fighters harassed the drone and sprayed fuel on it, before one clipped the drone’s propeller, causing it to crash into the sea.
“This incident demonstrates a lack of competence in addition to being unsafe and unprofessional,” said James B. Hecker, commander of U.S. air forces in Europe.
White House spokesman John Kirby said U.S. officials had told Russia’s ambassador Anatoly Antonov that Moscow must be more careful: “The message was: Don’t do this again.”
According to Russia’s account, there was no collision. The drone crashed after making “sharp manoeuvres”, having “deliberately and provocatively” flown close to Russian air space. Moscow had scrambled its fighters to identify it.
“The unacceptable activity of the U.S. military in the close proximity to our borders is a cause for concern,” Antonov, the ambassador, said in a statement, accusing Washington of using drones to “gather intelligence which is subsequently used by the Kyiv regime to strike at our armed forces and territory”.
“Let us ask a rhetorical question: if, for example, a Russian strike drone appeared near New York or San Francisco, how would the U.S. Air Force and Navy react?” he said, calling on Washington to “stop making sorties near the Russian borders”.
The Kremlin said there had been no high-level contacts with Washington over the incident, describing bilateral relations as “lamentable”.
Kyiv, for its part, said the incident showed Moscow was willing to “expand the conflict zone” to draw in other countries. Russia was raising the stakes as it faces “conditions of a strategic defeat” in Ukraine, tweeted Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council.
The United States conducts regular surveillance flights in international air space in the region. It has supported Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars in military aid but says its troops have not become directly engaged in the war, which Moscow portrays as a conflict against the combined might of the West.
