UK to deploy spy jet to monitor Ukraine crisis

Britain is to send a Royal Air Force (RAF) reconnaissance jet in a spy flight over Ukraine’s neighbouring countries to monitor the spiraling crisis in the Eastern European country.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said on Monday that the UK E-3D Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft will fly from the RAF Waddington airbase in Lincolnshire to Poland and Romania in an attempt to “enhance situational awareness” about Ukraine.

The airbase is considered to be home to XIII Squadron, the team that operates Britain’s largest and only armed drone known as the Reaper.

The MoD said the deployment of the RAF plane to Ukrainian borders is part of the mission by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to monitor the current turmoil in Ukraine.

The western military alliance gave the go-ahead for the reconnaissance flights over Poland and Romania earlier this week following a recommendation from US Air Force General Philip Breedlove, who is also NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.

“As the UK E-3D AWACS is part of the Nato Awacs force, then it is only right that the UK undertakes its share of this mission,” a MoD spokeswoman said.

Meanwhile, the Voice of Russia, the Russian government’s international radio broadcasting service, reported the British plane to be a surveillance drone.

Political crisis erupted in Ukraine in November 2013 after the country’s ousted president, Viktor Yanukovych, refrained from signing the Association Agreement with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia.