Russia's Defense Ministry is falsely claiming that Russian Air Force fighter jets prevented two American strategic bombers from entering the Russian airspace in the Arctic.
In a July 21 post on Russia's Telegram messaging app that was marked with a thunder strike emoji, the Defense Ministry described a dramatic sequence of events that climaxed when Russian fighter jets forced the American aircraft away from its border.
Detecting a "group of air targets approaching the border of the Russian Federation above the Barents Sea," Russia scrambled MiG fighter jets to "prevent them from violating the state border of the Russian Federation."
"At the approach of the Russian fighter jets, the American strategic bombers conducted a U-turn from the state border of the Russian Federation," wrote Russian defense officials.
That is false.
The Russian Defense Ministry falsified the story about the U.S. strategic bombers attempting to enter the Russian airspace and violate Russia's state borders.
The two U.S. B-52 Stratofortress long-range strategic bombers were en route to an airbase near the Black Sea coast in Romania. Flying over international waters, they did not change course and arrived at their destination on schedule, the U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) said in a same-day statement.
"While flying in international airspace and in accordance with international law, the U.S. B-52 aircraft were intercepted by two Russian aircraft over the Barents Sea," USAFE officials said. The U.S. bombers "did not change course due to the intercept and continued along their scheduled flight plan without incident."
Russia's mischaracterization of events flooded Russian state-controlled news platforms, falsely reporting the "incident" to millions of Russians as a credible piece of information.
Russia's main Channel 1 opened nearly all of its news programs with a host reading from a piece of paper: "An urgent statement from the defense ministry! A violation of our state border by American strategic bombers was prevented!"
Scores of pro-Russian social-media accounts boosted the false reports as verified news, including self-described "independent journalists" posting in English.
On the video streaming platform YouTube, some foreign news media outlets repeated the Russian falsehood about preventing American bombers from entering Russia.
The Hindustan Times headlined a post on its YouTube channel with 7 million subscribers: "U.S. provoking Russia for War? Putin's Jets Force American Planes to Retreat."
Russia has been consistently boosting its disinformation campaign to discredit U.S. interests and alliances in Europe and sow discord between the U.S. and its NATO allies.
The B-52s are the United States' most feared long-range bombers, and the U.S. wants Russia to know about their flights to Europe, CNN reported in April.
This week's flight of the B-52 Stratofortresses marks their first operation involving Romania's Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base, Stars and Stripes reported. Known as MK, the base "serves as the main operational hub for the U.S. military in the Black Sea region and is undergoing a multibillion-dollar expansion by NATO that will make it larger than even Ramstein Air Base in Germany," the report said.