Air conflict between Russia and the United States. A pair of Russian military fighters, two SU-27s, intercepted a US surveillance drone yesterday in international waters of the Black Sea. The action forced Washington to drop the drone on the water. According to the American version, one of the fighters collided with the propeller of the drone, although it was able to land without problems on the Crimean peninsula.
As the Pentagon explained, the MQ-9 Reaper drone was conducting a routine mission in international waters when two Russian aircraft attempted to intercept it. One of the devices came to fly very close to the drone and threw fuel at it several times, a circumstance that caused damage to the operation of the Reaper and forced it to be withdrawn from service.
Half an hour after the US reported the incident, Russia’s Defense Ministry denied any contact between its fighters and the drone. According to his version, it was the US that decided to drop the device into the Black Sea. According to the Russian statement, the MQ-9 drone lost altitude due to an uncontrolled maneuver “and collided with the surface of the water”.
In fact, there are no precedents of this type of situation since the end of the cold war, in 1989. Washington attached the highest importance to the incident, and informed its allies in the conflict that Kyiv faces with Moscow The American State Department summoned the Russian ambassador to Washington to ask for an explanation.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said President Joe Biden was briefed on the matter. Vladimir Putin, who was visiting Siberia, was also informed of the incident.
The lack of Russian response to the incident – a statement published on the website of the official Russian news agency TASS – contrasted with the abundant information provided by the United States. Brigadier General Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said the two Russian jets harassed the U.S. drone for a period of 30 to 40 minutes, flying very close to it, to the point of dumping fuel on it. the device and collide one of the fighters with the propeller of the drone. At that point, according to the Pentagon, the person controlling it remotely decided to crash it into the Black Sea.
Ryder acknowledged that the United States has not recovered the device, but added that it was not in Russian hands either. However, the military did not want to specify whether the Russians had tried to seize the device, which would have allowed them to obtain a lot of information about the technology of the United States.
The Pentagon spokesman added that “interferences” of this kind had occurred on other occasions, but none had reached the degree of recklessness of the events that happened yesterday. The military insisted that Russia could have lost both of its planes if they had collided head-on with the drone. Ryder added that the US drones will not stop carrying out information tasks in the area despite what has happened.
Since Russia invaded in February 2022, tension between Moscow and Washington has been on the rise. The Russian Navy de facto controls the Black Sea and blocks the access of Ukrainian ships. The United States has been the main driver of supplying arms to Ukraine, a situation that has allowed Kyiv to stabilize the front and cause significant losses to the invading army.
The weaponry that the United States and its allies have sent to Ukraine in recent months has grown in power and precision as the war has dragged on and Western public opinion has pressured their governments over war crimes committed by from Russia in the area.
The last chapter of this arms escalation has been the delivery of armored vehicles, Leopard in the European case, Abrams in the case of the United States. The possibility of helping Ukraine with fighter jets, however, has always been avoided by Washington, despite the demands of the countries most committed to Kyiv, such as Poland. Warsaw reported yesterday that in the coming weeks it will have devices to be sent to Ukraine. The US, however, fears the consequences of such a decision.
