Russian fighter jet collides with US drone over Black Sea

US President Biden has been briefed on the incident by national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

A Russian fighter jet collided with a US drone over the Black Sea on Tuesday, AFP reported quoting the US military's European Command.

This forced the US Air Force to bring down its unmanned aircraft, the American military stated."Our MQ-9 aircraft was conducting routine operations in international airspace when it was intercepted and hit by a Russian aircraft, resulting in a crash and complete loss of the MQ-9," said US Air Force General James Hecker, commander of US Air Forces Europe and Air Forces Africa.

"In fact, this unsafe and unprofessional act by the Russians nearly caused both aircraft to crash."

White House National Security spokesman John Kirby said US President Joe Biden was briefed on the incident by national security adviser Jake Sullivan. The US European Command said in a statement that two Russian Su-27 fighter jets "conducted an unsafe and unprofessional intercept" of a U.S. MQ-9 drone that was operating within international airspace over the Black Sea, according to a PTI report.

NATO diplomats in Brussels confirmed the incident but they don not expect it to immediately escalate into a further confrontation.

However, there was no immediate reaction from Moscow, which has repeatedly voiced concern about US intelligence flights close to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Amid the continuing fighting in Ukraine, a Russian missile struck an apartment building in the center of Kramatorsk on Tuesday, killing at least one person and wounding nine others in one of Ukraine's major city strongholds in its eastern Donetsk region. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted a video showing gaping holes in the façade of the low-rise building that bore the brunt of the strike.

The Ukrainian general prosecutor's office and regional Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko also reported on the attack, posting photos of the building with mounds of rubble in front of it. The impact damaged nine apartment blocks, a kindergarten, a local bank branch and two cars, Kyrylenko said. The war, which erupted after Russia's launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, has brought heavy civilian casualties.

Tuesday's victims were among at least seven civilians killed and 30 wounded in 24 hours, Ukraine authorities said. They included a 55-year-old woman killed when a Russian shell hit her car Tuesday in a border town in northeastern Ukraine. "Russian troops are striking residential buildings, schools and hospitals, leaving cities on fire and in ruins," Kyrylenko, the regional governor, said on Ukrainian television.

"The Russians mark each meter (yard) of their advance in the region not only with their own blood, but also with the (lost) lives of civilians." Kramatorsk houses the local Ukrainian army headquarters. Ukrainian authorities say it has been regularly targeted by Russian shelling and other attacks in the past.

A missile strike on the city's train station last April, which Kyiv and much of the international community blamed on Moscow, killed dozens of people and wounded more than 100. Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking Tuesday during a meeting with workers at a helicopter factory in southern Siberia, once again cast the conflict in Ukraine as an existential one for Russia, charging that unlike the West - which, he said, is seeking to advance its geopolitical clout - it's fighting for its existence as a state.

"For us, it's not a geopolitical task," Putin said, "it's the task of survival of Russian statehood and the creation of conditions for the future development of our country." Ukrainian forces have also dug in, especially in the devastated eastern city of Bakhmut where Kyiv's troops have been fending off Russian attacks for seven months and which has become a symbol of Ukraine's resistance, as well as a focal point of the war.

With inputs from agencies