Russia warned the United States on Wednesday to stay out of its airspace after a US drone was intercepted by Russian jets and crashed into the Black Sea, the first known direct confrontation between the superpowers since Russia invaded Ukraine.
The incident was caused by a mid-air collision after two Russian Su-27 fighter planes approached one of the US military’s MQ-9 Reaper drones on a reconnaissance mission over international waters, according to the US military.
The fighters harassed the drone and poured fuel on it before one clipped the drone’s propeller, causing it to crash into the sea, according to Washington.
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Moscow, on the other hand, denied any involvement in the crash of the drone, which the Pentagon said was on a routine ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) mission.
The US State Department said it had summoned Russia’s ambassador to protest.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby later said, “obviously, we refute the Russians’ denial” and added that the United States is trying to prevent the fallen drone from getting into the wrong hands.
“Without getting into too much detail, what I can say is that we’ve taken steps to protect our equities with respect to that particular drone -– that particular aircraft,” Kirby told CNN.
“We obviously don’t want to see anybody getting their hands on it beyond us.”
Russian intercepts over the Black Sea are common, Kirby told journalists in Washington, but this one “is noteworthy because of how unsafe and unprofessional it was, indeed reckless that it was”.
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 NATO alliance, which has been arming Kyiv to help it defend itself.
Reports of a missile strike in eastern Poland in November briefly caused alarm before Western military sources concluded that it was a Ukrainian air defence missile, not a Russian one.