A near-collision between a Russian military plane and a Polish plane has forced NATO to put its air police on “higher alert”, a NATO official told The Daily Beast.
The incident took place over the Black Sea near Romania on Friday when the Polish plane was conducting a patrol as part of its duties at Frontex, the European Union’s border protection agency. Frontex is headquartered in Warsaw, Poland.
“NATO air policing detachments were placed on higher alert in response to dangerous behavior by a Russian military plane near a Polish Frontex plane over the Black Sea near Romania on Friday,” the official told The Daily Beast. “NATO remains vigilant.”
The official did not answer questions about how NATO assesses Russia’s intent in the incident.
The Russian jet, a Su-35, carried out three “aggressive and dangerous maneuvers” in the direction of the Polish plane, according to the Polish border guard. The Polish crew lost control and height as a result, the Polish border guard said on social media.
According to the crew, the Russian plane was only five meters away at times.
According to US officials, Russian planes often perform unsafe and unprofessional flights in the vicinity of planes from other countries. Some of these maneuvers could lead to an unintended escalation, according to US officials. In March, this behavior began to increase, US officials said.
The news comes just weeks after a Russian Su-35 plane conducted an “unsafe and unprofessional interception” with an American F-16 plane over Syria, according to the Pentagon. The latest incident also came two months after a Russian Su-27 aircraft performed an unsafe and unprofessional maneuver and eventually struck a US drone over the Black Sea. The US Air Force The MQ-9 aircraft was shot down entirely after the incident, given the damage sustained.
In the MQ-9 incident, the Russian aircraft spit fuel in front of the drone in a provocative move.
At the time, Russia denied having acted unprofessionally and hit the US drone. Russian officials said the drone crashed after a sharp maneuver and claimed it was flying towards Crimea, the peninsula Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.
John Kirby, a White House National Security Council coordinator, said at the time that these kinds of moves will not stop the United States from operating over the Black Sea, even if Russia continues to wage war in Ukraine.
“If the message is that they discourage or discourage us from flying and operating in international airspace over the Black Sea, then that message will fail… we will continue to fly and operate in international airspace over international waters,” he said Kirby said in March.