British and German fighter jets scrambled to intercept a Russian aircraft near Estonian airspace – hours after one of Moscow’s warplanes downed a US drone over the Black Sea.
The RAF and German Typhoon jets flew in after the Russian air-to-air refuelling aircraft failed to communicate with Estonian air traffic control as it approached NATO airpsace.
The Il-78 Midas plane was flying from St Petersburg and Kaliningrad. The NATO planes later also intercepted a Russian Antonov 148 military transport aircraft.
While the UK Ministry of Defence emphasised the routine nature of the mission, the incident occurred amid heightened tensions between the West and Russia.
Moscow’s ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, said on Wednesday that an earlier incident that saw one of its Su-27 fighter jets and a US military drone collide over the Black Sea was a provocation by the West.
He claimed the American drone intentionally and provocatively moved towards Russian territory with transponders turned off.
The US, meanwhile, claims the incident was Russia fault and that it was the result of an “unsafe and unprofessional intercept” by two Russian Su-27 fighter jets.
The Kremlin has said it will view any further “action with US weaponry as openly hostile”.
Moscow warned against “hostile” US flights on Wednesday, as Washington blamed Russia for the incident, calling its fighters’ conduct reckless and unprofessional.
However, Russia has denied any wrongdoing.
“We assume that the United States will refrain from further speculation in the media and stop flights near Russian borders,” Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, said Wednesday.
“We consider any action with the use of US weaponry as openly hostile,” he wrote on social media channel Telegram.
Russia’s defence ministry said Tuesday it scrambled fighter jets following the detection of a US drone over the Black Sea and denied causing the crash.
The Pentagon said its drone was on a routine mission when it was intercepted “in a reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner,”, while Russia countered the aircraft was out of control.
“As a result of a sharp manoeuvre… the MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicle entered an uncontrolled flight with loss of altitude and collided with the surface of the water,” the ministry said adding that the two Russian jets had no contact with the US aircraft and did not use their weapons.
The US State Department said it had summoned Russia’s ambassador to protest. White House national security spokesman John Kirby followed up saying, “obviously, we refute the Russians’ denial”.
He added the United States was trying to prevent the fallen drone from getting into the wrong hands.
“We’ve taken steps to protect our equities with respect to that particular drone — that particular aircraft,” Kirby told CNN.
Russian intercepts over the Black Sea are common, Kirby said 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 diplomatic channels between Russia and the United States could help limit any fallout.
“To my mind, diplomatic channels will mitigate this,” the source said. Russia’s campaign in Ukraine 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 it was a Ukrainian air defence missile, not a Russian one.
