The United States (US) has summoned Russia’s ambassador to vehemently condemn the crash of an American drone over the Black Sea after a Russian warplane collided with it, the State Department said.
According to the Pentagon, a Russian SU-27 fighter jet crashed into a US unmanned MQ-9 Reaper drone in international airspace above the Black Sea, causing the American aircraft to crash.
The US military said a Russian fighter jet dumped fuel on an American drone over the Black Sea and collided with it, causing this mishap. They added that the incident followed a pattern of dangerous behaviour by Russian pilots operating near aircraft flown by the US and its allies, including over the Black Sea.
The US wants to convey firmly “our strong objections to this unsafe, unprofessional intercept.” White House said this is because of Russia’s ‘reckless’ behaviour.
This has intensified the tension between the two old foes. The blame game has begun. Both are at loggerheads and hurled accusations at each other. On the one hand, Russia claimed that the American drone sharply manoeuvred and crashed after an encounter with Russian jets near Crimea but insisted that Russian fighter jets didn’t fire weapons or hit the drone. The Russian Ministry said their fighters from air defence forces on duty were in the air to identify the “intruder” over the Black Sea.
Contrarily, the US State Department spokesperson Ned Price has said that a Russian fighter jet struck the propeller of the surveillance drone in a “brazen violation of international law.” Both sides, in their defence, claim their presence in the region was innocent. To throw the scent off oneself, framing the other side as the culprit and trying to sabotage.
A Strategic toolkit or a Naive mistake?
This simmering tension between the two escalates against the backdrop of the volatile Ukraine-Russian war. Sceptics believe this is a severe development and could lead to a Russia-Ukraine military confrontation.
Some analysts believe that the change they are trying to compel in this case is to keep US aircraft and boats away from the fringes of the Ukraine war, where Russia’s invasion remains stalled and hugely costly. Ukrainian forces are benefiting from US intelligence support.
A 2021 Rand Corporation study analysed dozens of close-shave incidents and concluded it was a matter of policy, which Rand dubbed “coercive signalling”.
Whereas others claimed that Moscow wants pragmatic ties with Washington. Nonetheless, it is the first time since February 24 2022, that both countries have directly collided. Will this incident be a turning point and set a mood for a Cold War 2.0? This can be determined by how far this incident would be stretched.
However, the Russian ambassador to the US has clearly stated that Moscow does not want confrontation. They also said this incident was a provocation. Provocation from whose side, no one is admitting who initiated it. The statements made by both countries advocating their arguments cannot be taken at face value.
They have always taken stark opposite views; thus, not looking at it from a neutral point of view will have the international community to lose the objectivity of resolving these disputes, as it has done in the Ukraine-Russian war.
Building power blocs and camps solely to decimate their rivals makes the countries lose their logic and sense of cooperation and flares unfair competition. It paves the way for unfair means to reach their end goals.
