MOSCOW, October 24. /TASS/. The multi-service grouping of forces created in Crimea guarantees the peninsula’s security while US bombers’ flights near its borders have no impact on it, member of the Defense and Security Committee in the upper house of Russia’s parliament Olga Kovitidi told TASS on Thursday.
The Defense Ministry of Russia reported on Wednesday that a Sukhoi Su-27 fighter jet of Russia’s Aerospace Force shadowed a US Air Force B-52H bomber on October 19, which flew near the Russian borders over the Black Sea. The PlaneRadar monitoring web portal characterized the US bomber’s maneuvers as a "bombing simulation."
"This is nothing else but ‘muscle-flexing.’ Such provocations that periodically occur near the Crimean coasts will have no implications that would affect the security of the Russian Federation and its region. I want to stress that a unique multi-service grouping has been created in Crimea and it guarantees the security of the republic’s citizens and guests of the sunny peninsula," the Russian senator said.
In the run-up to the presidential election in the United States, the US Department of State should display a more careful approach to its customary "muscle-flexing game," the senator from Crimea said, adding that the "American electors have some specific features that have to be taken into account."