SIMFEROPOL (Sputnik) — On Wednesday, the Russian Black Sea Fleet said that the Ukrainian military plane An-26 had carried out two provocative approaches at extremely low altitude to Russia's Tavrida and Crimea-1 drilling platforms in the Black Sea.
“The Crimeans are extremely outraged by this incident. It has been a long time for the West to realize the danger of such a policy and to clam down Kiev’s regime, which is intentionally creating artificial conflicts on the border with Russia in order to bargain through political blackmail for yet another tranche [from the West],” Ruslan Balbek, a Russian lawmaker representing Crimea, said.
He noted that the Crimeans had already got used to such provocations of the Kiev authorities and their “pirate and barbaric methods.”
Following the provocative maneuvers by the Ukrainian transport plane, the Russian Defense Ministry summoned on Wednesday a military attache at the Ukrainian Embassy in Moscow to hand a protest note over the incident.
