Russian fighter jet hits American drone as tensions soar

The US European Command said in a statement on Tuesday that two Russian Su-27 fighter jets “conducted an unsafe and unprofessional intercept” of a US MQ-9 drone that was operating within international airspace over the Black Sea.

It said one of the Russian fighters “struck the propeller of the MQ-9, causing US forces to have to bring the MQ-9 down in international waters,” adding that several times before the collision, the Su-27s dumped fuel on and flew in front of the MQ-9 in “a reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner”.

“This incident demonstrates a lack of competence in addition to being unsafe and unprofessional,” it added.

The incident comes amid soaring Russian-US tensions over Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted a video showing gaping holes in the façade of the low-rise building that bore the brunt of the strike.

The Ukrainian general prosecutor’s office and regional Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko also reported on the attack, posting photos of the building with mounds of rubble in front of it. The impact damaged nine apartment blocks, a kindergarten, a local bank branch and two cars, Kyrylenko said.

The war, which erupted after Russia’s launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, has brought heavy civilian casualties. Tuesday’s victims were among at least seven civilians killed and 30 wounded in 24 hours, Ukraine authorities said.

They included a 55-year-old woman killed when a Russian shell hit her car on Tuesday in a border town in northeastern Ukraine.

“Russian troops are striking residential buildings, schools and hospitals, leaving cities on fire and in ruins,” Kyrylenko, the regional governor, said on Ukrainian television.

“The Russians mark each metre of their advance in the region not only with their own blood, but also with the (lost) lives of civilians.”

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Kramatorsk houses the local Ukrainian army headquarters. Ukrainian authorities say it has been regularly targeted by Russian shelling and other attacks in the past.

A missile strike on the city’s train station last April, which Kyiv and much of the international community blamed on Moscow, killed dozens of people and wounded more than 100.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking Tuesday during a meeting with workers at a helicopter factory in southern Siberia, once again cast the conflict in Ukraine as an existential one for Russia, charging that unlike the West — which, he said, is seeking to advance its geopolitical clout — it’s fighting for its existence as a state.

“For us, it’s not a geopolitical task,” Putin said.

“It’s the task of survival of Russian statehood and the creation of conditions for the future development of our country.”

Ukrainian forces have also dug in, especially in the devastated eastern city of Bakhmut where Kyiv’s troops have been fending off Russian attacks for seven months and which has become a symbol of Ukraine’s resistance, as well as a focal point of the war.

Zelenskyy discussed the situation in Bakhmut with the top military brass and they were unanimous in their determination to face down the Russian onslaught, according to the presidential office.

“The defensive operation in (Bakhmut) is of paramount strategic importance to deterring the enemy. It is key for the stability of the defense of the entire frontline,” Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said.

Putin emphasised that his country’s industries have survived the blow of Western sanctions. But he acknowledged those sanctions could bring longer-term problems for the Russian economy.