U.S. and Russian officials are each accusing the other side of being the aggressor in a dangerous encounter between a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone and a Russian military jet over Syria on July 23.
Russian Rear Adm. Oleg Gurinov told the Russian state-run TASS news agency that a U.S. drone nearly caused a midair collision with Russian warplanes operating near Al-Bab, in northern Syria’s Aleppo region. He claimed that the U.S. drone eventually turned its targeting system on a Russian jet, automatically triggering the Russian warplane’s defensive systems.
