The leaders of China and Russia are meeting together and establishing a powerful pact, and things continue to escalate between Putin and the West.
According to a recent statement from Russia, one of their fighter jets just intercepted two U.S. B-52 bombers over the Baltic Sea on Monday. This is obviously a provocation that comes just days after Russian jets forced a U.S. drone to crash into the Black Sea.
A Russian Su-35 was scrambled toward the U.S. planes as they were moving toward Russia. They had to return to their base when the B-52s turned away, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. The statement made by Russia included video footage from one of their plane’s cockpits.
“On March 20, radar facilities of the air defense forces of the Western military district on duty over the Baltic Sea detected two air targets flying in the direction of the Russian Federation’s state border,” the ministry said. “No violation of the state border of the Russian Federation was permitted.”
The U.S. did not immediately comment on the incident.
As stated earlier, Chinese President Xi Jinping was in Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The purpose of their talks was to end the Russia-Ukraine war. This controversial meeting took place just after two Russian nuclear bombers flew over the Sea of Japan for several hours at the same time that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was visiting Ukraine.
The U.S. drone that the Russians messed with was a $32 million U.S. MQ-9 Reaper spy drone. They first dumped fuel on it and then one of the Russian jets hit the propeller which caused U.S. forces to take the drone down into international waters.
The White House called Russia’s actions “reckless” but said it has not determined if the Russian pilots intentionally downed the U.S. drone.
“Incidents happen,” said Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “And clearly we do not seek armed conflict with Russia and I believe at this point we should investigate this incident and move on from there.”
⚡️@mod_russia: 🇷🇺 air defence radars detected 2 aerial targets flying in the direction of 🇷🇺 state border over the Baltic Sea.
❗️The targets were classified as 2 🇺🇸 Air Force B-52H strategic bombers.
A Su-35 fighter jet scrambled to prevent a violation of 🇷🇺 state border. pic.twitter.com/3u9IRFC5iK
— Russian Embassy in USA 🇷🇺 (@RusEmbUSA) March 20, 2023
