Russia says one of its fighter jets intercepted a U.S. bomber flying near its border over the Baltic Sea.
The Defense Ministry said in a statement that the Su-27 was dispatched to the area on the morning of June 6 after Russian radar detected an aircraft flying along the border over international waters of the Baltic Sea.
The ministry said the Russian aircraft identified the U.S. plane as a B-52 strategic bomber and escorted it until it set course away from the Russian border.
The encounter comes as relations between Moscow and the West have sunk to lows unseen since the Cold War amid rancor over Russia’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, its backing of separatists in eastern Ukraine, and other issues.
In May, the U.S. military said its jets intercepted two Russian Tu-95 nuclear-capable bombers accompanied by two fighters that flew near the Alaskan coast.
And in September, a Russian fighter jet flew close a U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft, in what American officials called an unsafe intercept over the Black Sea.