US officials are complaining that a Russian fighter jet “buzzed” a Navy P-8 spy plane operating in the Black Sea, in international airspace, declaring it a “provocation” by the Russians.
“Buzzed” appears to be an overstatement, as the two planes were never within less than 50 feet of one another.. Rather, US officials are mad that the Russian Su-30 jet engaged its afterburner, causing “violent turbulence” for the Americans.
The incident apparently happened on Saturday but was not reported until Tuesday. Retired Russian Deputy Air Force Commander Nikolay Antoshkin shrugged off US complaints saying, the incident was handled as expected.
Antoshkin noted that the Black Sea is an enclosed sea, saying the US “has no business” conducting surveillance operations within it. He said the Russian plane simply identified the spy plane and indicated it needed to leave the area.
The Russians said the plane was headed directly towards Russia at high speed. Of course these days, a fake news outlet like Fox doesn’t even bother to include the Russian statements in its unfair and unbalanced attacks on Russia. But I’d imagine that any country would intercept when another country that constantly threatens war and which masses its troops on their borders sends a plane at high speed towards them. But of course America the land of the unfree spins this as something evil that the Russians did, not mentioning that the war-hungry Americans were being highly provacative.
Americans many thousands of miles away from home and poking around the Black Sea is somehow overlooked and considered “normal” but the man who lives there and tells them to scat is labeled “provocative”…. Puhleeeze!…
Scotty. Beam me up!
Almost as good as the recent Reuters headline “Russian spy jet flies over Japan” read the story and it was Russian jets flying over the SEA of Japan of which Russia has a very long Coastline, since when is it provocative to fly over your own coastline.
That afterburner trick is something USN planes of the 6th Fleet did routinely to the Soviet ships in the Med. It has been going on for decades, and we did plenty of it too, probably more than they did because we had more planes that could do it.
The Russians will accept being buzzed in the Gulf of Mexico.
One need read no further than ‘US spy plane’ to know it’s another episode of overblown hysteria. It’s okay when we do it, but it’s ‘provocation’ when they do it.
Horrorshow!
It could have been worse. They could have bombed the hell out of the U.S. ship the way the U.S.S. Liberty was bombed killing our sailors.
How would the U.S. react if a Russian jet buzzed one of our ships on Lake Ontario?