2023-05-07 13:57:40
A Russian Su-35 fighter jet intercepted a Polish plane on patrol for the Frontex agency over the Black Sea on Friday, causing the pilots to temporarily “lose control”, according to a statement issued in Warsaw Sunday.
Polish government spokesman Piotr Mueller said on private TV channel Polsat News that it was a “planned provocation by Russia”.
On Saturday evening, Romania was the first to announce the incident, considering it “aggressive and unacceptable behavior” by Moscow.
The Polish border guards stated that the Russian plane “entered without any radio communication the area of operations identified by Romania, and carried out aggressive and dangerous maneuvers and approached the Polish border guard plane 3 times without the necessary safety distance.”
The plane, a “Turbulet L410”, was subjected to “major turbulence”, and “the crew, consisting of 5 employees, including two pilots, lost control of the plane and went down.”
Polish border guards confirmed that the Russian fighter passed “directly in front of the plane,” crossing its path at a distance of regarding “5 meters.”
After the accident, the plane’s crew managed to land it safely in Romania.
And the Romanian Ministry of Defense considered in a statement that what happened was “further evidence of the provocative approach of the Russian Federation over the Black Sea,” condemning the “repeated dangerous maneuvers” by an “irresponsible” Russian pilot.
It explained that the accident of the unarmed Polish plane took place “in international airspace over the Black Sea”, 60 km east of Romanian airspace.
The Polish plane was deployed to Romania on April 19 and is scheduled to stay there until May 17 as part of a Frontex mission organized by Romania that also includes Spain and Sweden.
In recent years, accidents of Russian planes and planes from NATO countries have multiplied, even before the start of the conflict in Ukraine.
It is located mostly over the Baltic Sea but also in the Black Sea and elsewhere.
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