US, Russia trade blows over drone downing near Crimea

Kremlin blames 'sharp maneuver' for crash while Pentagon calls intercept 'reckless'

Russia and the United States on Wednesday offered different accounts of the downing of a US intelligence drone in the Black Sea, as the incident added to tensions between Moscow and Washington over the Ukraine crisis.

According to a Reuters report, the US military MQ-9 Reaper surveillance drone crashed on Tuesday after being intercepted by Russian fighter jets. The Pentagon said one of the Russian Su-27 jets struck the propeller of the drone, making it inoperable, a claim denied by Moscow which blamed the drone's "sharp maneuver" for the crash and said its jets did not make contact.

The downing appeared to be the first time since the height of the Cold War that a US aircraft was brought down after an encounter with a Russian warplane, The Associated Press commented.