U.S.-Russia military tensions intensify
WASHINGTON — Russian fighter jets repeatedly veered 100 feet in front of a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber over the Black Sea. Six Russian warplanes flew close enough to Alaska that Air Force F-22s scrambled to intercept them. And seven U.S. soldiers were injured when a Russian armored vehicle deliberately rammed an American patrol in northeast Syria.
Within a few days last week, smoldering tensions between the United States and Russian militaries flared around the world. Already fraught with fresh evidence of election interference, the relationship between Washington and Moscow has grown even more tense after the recent military encounters.
Joe Biden, in a speech in Pennsylvania on Monday, rebuked President Donald Trump for failing to publicly address the altercation in Syria. “Did you hear the president say a single word? Did he lift one finger?” Biden asked.
Biden, the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, also criticized Trump for failing to raise the issue of suspected Russian bounties on U.S. troops in Afghanistan during multiple phone calls with President Vladimir Putin of Russia in recent months.
“Never before has an American president played such a subservient role to a Russian leader,” Biden said. “It’s not only dangerous, it’s humiliating and embarrassing for the rest of the world to see. It weakens us.”
Biden added, “Not even American troops can feel safer under Trump.”
Trump has said that he did not bring up the CIA assessment of bounties when he talked to Putin, describing reports of such intelligence as a “hoax.” It was unclear if the president brought up the subject in a phone call with Putin last week.
By contrast, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said he took the issue seriously enough that he and a senior Pentagon leader had warned their Russian counterparts about the matter.
The incidents last week come at a time when Trump’s critics say he has refused to criticize or challenge Russia’s increasing aggressions toward the West, and has even accommodated Moscow’s wishes.
The United States is cutting back its deployments in Germany by nearly 12,000 troops over the objections of NATO allies, shrinking a military footprint long resented by the Kremlin.