US and Russia ratchet up rhetoric over downing of drone

A US MQ-9 drone (Massoud Hossaini/AP)

Russia and the United States have ratcheted up confrontational rhetoric over a US surveillance drone that encountered Russian warplanes and crashed near the Crimean Peninsula, while both countries pledged to try to avoid escalation.

The Kremlin said the incident proved again that Washington is directly involved in the fighting and added that Moscow would try to recover the wreckage of the drone from the Black Sea.