NATO spy plane spotted over Black Sea

A NATO-operated Bombardier Challenger 650 Artemis II intelligence, surveillance and target acquisition aircraft conducted a patrol over international waters in the southern Black Sea on July 9, according to a source in EU air traffic control circles cited by the Russian state news agency.

The source said the aircraft was flying repeated west-to-east patrols over the southern part of the Black Sea while remaining in international airspace and without entering the airspace of any coastal state.

The aircraft reportedly departed from Constanța, Romania, where it has been based for several months, before transiting Romanian- and Bulgarian-controlled airspace to reach its patrol area. It was operating at an altitude of approximately 10.5 kilometres outside civilian air traffic corridors, the source said.

The reported mission follows two consecutive days of surveillance flights by the same aircraft near Russia's Kaliningrad region. According to the source, those operations were conducted through Lithuanian and Polish airspace as well as international airspace over the Baltic Sea.

The source also said that the Artemis II was accompanied by a Royal Air Force Boeing RC-135W Rivet Joint signals intelligence aircraft, which flew from RAF Waddington to conduct reconnaissance flights along the border of the Kaliningrad region before returning to the United Kingdom.

According to the source, Artemis II flights over the Black Sea have become more frequent over the past month, with several missions also taking place at weekends, a pattern the source described as unusual compared with previous operations.

By Aghakazim Guliyev