(Moscow) Russia said on Monday that it had taken off two of its warplanes to meet two British fighters which it said were approaching its border over the Black Sea.
“As the Russian fighters approached, the foreign warplanes turned around and moved away from Russia’s border,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
According to him, they were two British Army Typhoon fighters accompanied by an RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft.
“The Russian planes returned safely to their home airfield. There was no violation of the Russian border,” the ministry added.
This type of incident involving Russian and Western aircraft has multiplied in recent months over the Black Sea, but also the Baltic, against a backdrop of conflict in Ukraine.
At the end of May, Moscow announced that it had intercepted four American strategic bombers over the Baltic in two different incidents in the space of a week.
Russian planes had also gone to meet French, German and Polish aircraft.
In April, it was an American Reaper MQ-9 drone that crashed in the Black Sea after maneuvers by Russian fighters, a crash that caused a bout of tension between Washington and Moscow.