The Russian Foreign Ministry handed a protest note to the U.S. embassy in Moscow yesterday warning against U.S./NATO military provocations in the Black Sea. “The military activity of the United States and NATO member states along the perimeter of Russia’s borders, including military flights and dangerous maneuvers by naval ships, continues to mount,” Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova reported of the statement. “The U.S. military and its NATO allies have gone from attempts to test the strength of our border protection system to provocations against civilian aircraft, which jeopardizes the safety of the airspace and puts human lives in danger.” The protest note “enumerates recent incidents which did not end in tragedy only due to sheer luck and the quick thinking of Russian pilots and air traffic controllers.”
The list starts with the December 3 incident in which an Aeroflot airliner passing over the Black Sea was forced to descend by nearly 2,000 meters in order to avoid hitting a U.S. Army contractor-operated CL-600 reconnaissance aircraft (misidentified in the statement as U.S. Air Force). “The crew failed to answer the air traffic dispatchers’ repeated calls,” Zakharova said. “Thanks exclusively to the professionalism and discipline of our aviation services, which promptly gave a command to the pilots of an Aeroflot flight, whose route was crossed by the reconnaissance aircraft, a collision was prevented.” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby dismissed the Russian accusations on Dec. 6, saying that there was no incident. A Maltese aircraft flying in the same area at the same time also had to maneuver in order to avoid a collision.
