US summons Russian ambassador over drone crash: State Dept

The United States has summoned Russia's ambassador to Washington on Tuesday after a Russian Su-27 fighter jet downed a U.S. military drone over the Black Sea, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said.

The U.S. ambassador to Moscow has conveyed a strong message to Russia's foreign affairs ministry and U.S. officials had briefed allies and partners about the incident, Price told reporters on a phone briefing.

"We are engaging directly with the Russians, again at senior levels, to convey our strong objections to this unsafe, unprofessional intercept, which caused the downing of the unmanned U.S. aircraft," Price said.

"We are summoning the Russian ambassador to the department where we will convey this message."

The meeting of Russian ambassador Anatoly Antonov with senior U.S. officials at the State Department will take place this afternoon, Price said, without saying who from the U.S. side he would be meeting.

Calling the incident a "brazen violation of international law," Price declined to say what response U.S. ambassador Lynne Tracy in Moscow received from the Russians when she conveyed Washington's protest.

He referred reporters to the Department of Defense when asked about the effort to recover the downed drone.

A Russian Su-27 fighter jet intercepted and struck the propeller of a U.S. military MQ-9 "Reaper" surveillance drone on Tuesday, causing it to crash into the Black Sea, the Pentagon said, in the first such incident since Russia's invasion of Ukraine over a year ago.

Two Russian Su-27 jets carried out what the U.S. military described as a reckless intercept of the American spy drone before one of them collided with it.