A Russian fighter jet flew very close to a U.S. reconnaissance plane over the Baltic Sea last week, the Pentagon said, just days after Russian attack planes buzzed a destroyer in the same region.
“The unsafe and unprofessional actions of a single pilot have the potential to unnecessarily escalate tensions between countries,” the Pentagon said in a statement about the Thursday incident.
The encounter between the Russian Su-27 Flanker and the U.S. Air Force RC-135 reconnaissance plane was “unsafe and unprofessional,” the U.S. military said.
The flight comes just days after Russian Su-24 attack planes repeatedly buzzed the destroyer USS Donald Cook in the region last week in a “simulated attack profile.”
The Russian Defense Military denied the unsafe operations around the destroyer, saying its pilots “fully observed all safety measures.”
“There have been repeated incidents over the last year where Russian military aircraft have come close enough to other air and sea traffic to raise serious safety concerns, and we are very concerned with any such behavior,” the Pentagon statement said.
