At one point, the planes past so close to the ship they created wakes in the water around it
Two Russian warplanes
repeatedly buzzed a US Navy destroyer in the Baltic Sea in what
American officials described as a "simulated attack".
At one point,
the Su-24 attack planes came so close to the ship – an estimated
30ft – that they created wakes in the water around it.
The Russian planes appeared to
be unarmed but did not respond to attempts to contact them by the crew of the
USS Donald Cook.
A US defence official said the
commander of the ship deemed the Russian planes’ actions to be unsafe and
unprofessional and that the US believed that it was a violation of a 1970s
agreement to prevent unsafe incidents at sea.
The
official told CNN it was a "simulated attack" and the planes were
practising "strafing runs" - a military technique of attacking
ground target from a low-flying aircraft - to "send a message to
Poland".
At one point, at least one of
the planes came within 30 feet of the ship - which the US official said
was a highly unusual.
He said the ship was
operating in international waters 70 nautical miles off the Russian enclave of
Kaliningrad. It had departed the Polish port of Gdynia on Monday.
It is currently unclear
whether the US government will formally protest to Russia. US Navy photographs
of the incident have not been released.
On Monday, a pair of Russian
Su-24 planes made 20 passes over the ship, coming as close as 1,000 yards at an
altitude of about 100 ft.
A Polish helicopter aboard the
Cook was scheduled to conduct flight operations but those manoeuvres were
cancelled because of the Russian actions, the official said.
On Tuesday, a Russian KA-26
submarine-hunting helicopter circled the Cook seven times, taking photographs,
he added.
Later that day, another pair
of Su-24 attack planes, apparently unarmed, buzzed the Cook 11 times.
The incident comes after
months of continuing diplomatic tensions between Moscow and Washington over
Russia's role in conflicts in Ukraine and Syria.
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