An armed Russian jet came within five feet of a U.S. spy plane over the Baltic Sea Monday, Fox News reports.
The Russian SU-27 fighter aircraft reportedly came up alongside the U.S. RC-135 and began flying in an “provocative” and “erratic” manner, U.S. officials said. Russia routinely buzzes U.S. ships and planes operating in the Baltic sea near its territory. The military has already had 35 interactions with Russian planes in the area in just the last 18 days.
The “unsafe” interaction is likely in response to rising tensions over the U.S. shootdown Sunday of a Syrian regime SU-22 that was targeting anti-ISIS fighters.
Russia is the main ally of the Syrian regime and strongly protested the U.S. shootdown. Russia went as far as to say it would consider U.S. aircraft in Syria west of the Euphrates river “targets” and pledged to track them with air defense systems.
“Any aircraft, including planes and drones of the international coalition, detected in the operation areas west of the Euphrates River by the Russian air forces will be followed by Russian ground-based air defense and air defense aircraft as air targets,” Russia’s defense ministry declared.
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