London. December 12. INTERFAX - The RC-135 Rivet Joint strategic reconnaissance aircraft of the US Air Force flew for the first time in the airspace of Ukraine, including in the south-east and south of the country to the north of Crimea, it follows from the data of Western aviation resources.
According to them, an American electronic reconnaissance aircraft, which took off from Mildenhall Airbase in the UK, entered the airspace of Ukraine in the Volyn region on the morning of December 11 and headed along the border with Belarus to the east of the country. For more than four hours, the American scout cruised along the route, starting from the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions in the southeast and then the Zaporozhye, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions in the south to the north of the Crimea up to the Odessa region.
In total, the plane was in the airspace of Ukraine for more than six hours. Previously, flights of such an aircraft over the country were not recorded. In operations in Ukraine, only strategic RQ-4 Global Hawk drones were used, which, in particular, conducted aerial reconnaissance along the contact line in the Donbass.
Until recently, RC-135 Rivet Joint aircraft were mainly used for conducting electronic reconnaissance near the borders of Russia on the Black Sea, in the Baltic region and in the North.
As reported by the National Defense Control Center of the Russian Federation, on Friday, a Su-30 fighter jet flew to escort a US Navy P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft over the Black Sea.
"The crew of the Russian fighter identified the aerial target as a US Navy P-8A reconnaissance aircraft and escorted it over the Black Sea. After the turn of a foreign military aircraft from the state border of the Russian Federation, the Russian fighter safely returned to the home airfield," the military said.
