Russian roulette on the Black Sea

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A military incident over the Black Sea has sparked tensions between the US and Russia. A US Reaper drone collided with two Russian Su-27 fighter jets on Tuesday. The background is unclear: the United States published a video on Thursday showing the Russian attack. Russia, however, continues to deny the accusation.

The incident was the first to lead to the downing of a Western drone. But it was by no means the only dangerous convergence between Western and Russian aircraft.

570 NATO missions – only because of Russia

No wonder: the skies over the Black Sea are teeming with NATO and Russian aircraft. And there are more and more. According to AFP, NATO air forces flew about 570 missions across Europe in 2022 to intercept Russian military aircraft approaching alliance airspace. In comparison, in 2021, according to NATO, there were 296 missions by Russian pilots.

Since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, NATO has expanded its presence in the Black Sea. At that time, the alliance expanded its surveillance of the airspace over the Black Sea. In November 2022, NATO called it the “biggest strengthening of collective defense in generations”.

And since the invasion of Ukraine began, NATO member states have been sending planes over the Black Sea every day for surveillance purposes, the AFP news agency wrote on Wednesday. On the one hand, these missions serve to collect information. On the other hand, it also wants to send a signal to Russia that NATO is vigilant in view of the conflict on its eastern flank. At the beginning of this year, NATO announced that it would send three additional surveillance aircraft to Romania.

Russian attacks more often

According to Eucom, the European arm of the US armed forces, Russian pilots have been aggressively targeting NATO manned and unmanned aircraft for some time. According to NATO, critical situations occur in the airspace above Ukraine about ten times a year.

In October, for example, Britain accused the Russian air force of firing a missile near a British Royal Air Force plane patrolling the Black Sea in late September.

And a few hours before the serious incident between two Russian fighter jets and a US drone, NATO jets from Great Britain and Germany allegedly intercepted a Russian military aircraft. This was traveling between St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad. The plane apparently had no contact with air traffic control in Estonia.

Will there be an escalation in the airspace?

While the US is keeping militarily out of the war in Ukraine, Russian and US air forces are increasingly clashing dangerously in neutral airspace over the Black Sea. An escalation in the event of a crash seems inevitable.

The US and Russia are also aware of this in the current drone affair – and are counting on de-escalation. US Security Council spokesman John Kirby, 60, warned that such inappropriate behavior by Russian pilots could lead to “misjudgments” between the two countries’ armed forces. “We don’t want this war to escalate beyond what it has already done to the Ukrainian people.”

Source: Blick