Pentagon released video of Black Sea incident

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Pentagon released a rare video on Thursday showing clips of an incident that involved a US surveillance drone and Russian aircraft in the Black Sea on Tuesday.

The US military claims that the drone fell into the sea after being damaged by Russian aircraft.

Moscow, for its part, condemned the provocation, maintaining that the US plane was damaged after its “sudden” maneuver and was not hit by Russian planes.

The unclassified video, about 40 seconds long, shows a Russian Su-27 fighter jet approaching an MQ-9 surveillance drone and refueling nearby.

According to the Pentagon a collision between the MQ-9 and a Russian aircraft resulted in the drone’s transmission of images being disrupted, and the film ends with images of a damaged propeller, which rendered the drone inoperable.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idris Ali, French edition by Jean-Stéphane Brosse)