Russia pilots reckless in drone collision - US

The US has accused Russia of reckless behaviour aft an American surveillance drone crashed into the Black Sea pursuing an brushwood with Russian combatant jets.

The US says the drone was connected a regular ngo successful planetary airspace erstwhile 2 Russian jets tried to intercept it.

The incidental highlights the expanding hazard of nonstop confrontation betwixt Russia and the US implicit the Ukraine war.

Russia denied that the 2 craft made immoderate contact.

The Russian defence ministry said the drone crashed aft a "sharp manoeuvre" and that the MQ-9 Reaper drone was flying with its transponders turned off. Transponders are communications devices that let the craft to beryllium tracked.

Reaper drones are surveillance craft with a 20m (66ft) wingspan.

The incidental happened astatine astir 07:03 Central European Time (06:03 GMT) connected Tuesday, according to the US military.

"Our MQ-9 craft was conducting regular operations successful planetary airspace erstwhile it was intercepted and deed by a Russian aircraft, resulting successful a clang and implicit nonaccomplishment of the MQ-9," the connection said.

Several times earlier the collision the Su-27 combatant jets dumped substance connected the drone successful a "reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner", it said.

The US summoned the Russian ambassador successful Washington, Anatoly Antonov, to protestation against the move.

Following the meeting, Russian authorities media quoted Mr Antonov arsenic saying that Moscow saw the drone incidental arsenic "a provocation" and that "the unacceptable enactment of the US subject successful the adjacent proximity to our borders is simply a origin for concern".

Tensions person risen implicit the Black Sea ever since Russia's annexation of Crimea successful 2014.

Since Russia's full-scale penetration of Ukraine the US and the UK person stepped up reconnaissance and surveillance flights, though ever operating successful planetary airspace.

The cardinal question is whether Tuesday's brushwood was an effort by Russia to disrupt the US drone and its work, oregon whether it was a deliberate effort to bring it down.

According to the US, determination has been a "pattern of unsafe actions by Russian pilots" interacting with allied craft successful the region.

This means the downing of the drone could conceivably person been the effect of a mistake by a Russian aviator who got excessively adjacent arsenic they "buzzed" the drone. But if this was a deliberate onslaught connected a US craft by a Russian warplane, past analysts accidental that would magnitude to a immense provocation and a important escalation.

In that case, the onslaught would beryllium seen arsenic an effort by the Kremlin to trial the effect of the United States.

Western allies person worked hard to halt the warfare successful Ukraine escalating into a nonstop confrontation with Russia. But this incidental implicit the Black Sea is conscionable that. The US volition present person to measure its response.

As US subject commanders warned successful their statement, this was a unsafe enactment that "could pb to miscalculation and unintended escalation".