One day since Russia warned that U.S. aircraft will be considered ‘targets’ in the airspace over Syria after a Syrian jet was shot down by the U.S. Navy, Cold War II is heating up.
According to reports this morning, a fully armed Russian Su-27 fighter jet buzzed a U.S. recon jet coming within 5 feet, which is highly dangerous.
In the course of the incident, the Russian pilot flashed his weapons and conducted erratic maneuvers, likely in an attempt to intimidate the American pilot.
It’s not a sign that tensions between the U.S. and Russia are cooling down at all.
Here’s more from Fox News…
An armed Russian fighter jet buzzed a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance aircraft in the Baltic Sea on Monday, two U.S. officials told Fox News.
The Russian Su-27 jet had air-to-air missiles under its wings and approached the U.S. Air Force RC-135 recon jet “rapidly,” coming within five feet of the American aircraft, the officials said.
Once alongside, the Russian jet was “provocative” in its flight maneuvers and flying “erratically,” according to another official.
Since June 2nd there have been over 35 interactions in the Baltic Sea region between U.S. and Russian jets and warships, but the incident Monday morning is notable because the U.S. military considered it “unsafe,” according to one official.
The incident comes one day after the Russian Defense Ministry said it would treat any U.S. jet flying west of the Euphrates River in Syria as a potential target, following a U.S. Navy jet’s shoot-down of a Syrian jet that was targeting U.S.-aligned fighters.
The Russian military has supported Syrian President Bashar Assad for decades and deployed dozens of fighter jets and helicopter gunships to shore up the Syrian regime in September 2015.
In February, Russian jets buzzed a U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer in the Black Sea, while the U.S. Army was unloading dozens of tanks and 500 U.S. Army soldiers arrived in a port in nearby Romania.
Two months later, that same destroyer, USS Porter, fired Tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria hitting an airbase belonging to the Russian-backed Assad regime.
