In a sign of increasingly aggressive behavior from Moscow, France’s defense minister said Thursday that Russian forces had threatened to shoot down French aircraft patrolling international airspace over the Black Sea, the Associated Press reported.

The minister, Sébastien Lecornou, did not give specific details about the French flights or aircraft involved in the downing threat. But he said Russia was returning to a “highly aggressive” posture reminiscent of the former Soviet Union’s behavior during the Cold War.

“A month ago, to give you a very specific example, a Russian air traffic control system threatened to shoot down French aircraft in the Black Sea when we were in a free international zone where we were patrolling,” he told RTL radio.
“Russia’s behavior in 2024 has nothing to do with what we saw in 2022 and, obviously, before the aggression in Ukraine,” the minister said. “It is explained by the fact that Russia is facing difficulties on the battlefield in Ukraine.”

A French military spokesman, Colonel Pierre Gaudillière, said Lecornou was referring to an incident in mid-November involving one of France’s four giant warning and control, or AWACS, surveillance aircraft. Gaudillière described the incident as unprecedented for a French flight in this area.

“It was a French AWACS,” flying over international waters in the Black Sea, Gaudillière said. “Threatened by the Russians via radio frequency.”

“It was a particularly aggressive exchange,” he added. “She’s the first.”

French air force pilots regularly patrol NATO’s eastern flank, part of the 31-nation military alliance’s efforts to bolster its defenses since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago.

French flights include long-range patrols by AWACS surveillance aircraft. Flying high over the Black Sea coast, they use powerful radar and other surveillance equipment to check across the Crimean peninsula that Russia seized from Ukraine and annexed in 2014. The surveillance flights can detect missile launches, aerial bombardments and other military activity in the Ukraine conflict.

Russian pilots have made it clear at times that they don’t like being watched.

In 2022, a Russian fighter jet fired a missile near a British Air Force RC-135 Rivet Joint surveillance aircraft flying in international airspace over the Black Sea, the British government said. The United States government released video in March 2023 of a Russian fighter jet dropping fuel on a US Air Force surveillance drone. The drone crashed in the Black Sea.