While President Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin had a lot of topics to talk about on Monday, the subject of Russian aircraft harassing US ships was not one of them.
“That did not come up in the call between the two presidents,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest, who said the duo had an “intense” discussion that was more focused on Syria than anything else.
According to the Washington Times, Earnest said that incidents between the US and Russian forces -such as the low-and-fast buzzing of the USS Donald Cook- have been commonplace for decades now and do not raise any serious alarm.
“Those kinds of activities are destabilizing and a source of some concern, but they’re not particularly unusual,” he said. “And there is an already well-established channel for expressing our concerns about those kinds of incidents from the U.S. military attaché in Moscow to his Russian military counterpart. Those concerns were raised at that level and were not escalated beyond that.”
Despite this, aggressive flying by Russian aircraft in or around the vicinity of US assets continues to be a source of concern for the general public. Secretary of State John Kerry said earlier this month that the Donald Cook would have been justified in shooting down the Russian planes, due to the wanton flying of their pilots. Russian officials argue that the pilots were following safe procedure during the incident.
In addition to low passes over US naval vessels, the Russians also intercepted an RC-135 reconnaissance plane, missing it by mere feet as it performed a barrel roll.
“There have been repeated incidents over the last year where Russian military aircraft have come close enough to other air and sea traffic to raise serious safety concerns, and we are very concerned with any such behavior,” the Pentagon stated in a release. “The unsafe and unprofessional actions of a single pilot have the potential to unnecessarily escalate tensions between countries.”
The phone conversation between Obama and Putin revolves around a new attempt at peace talks concerning the Syrian government forces of Bashar Assad and opposition forces who currently rebel against the regime.
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