Russia has falsely claimed a “violation” of its air space by an RAF reconnaissance plane after a tourist flight was forced “to increase altitude by 1,000ft” over the Black Sea.

Open sources show a flight by a British Boeing RC-135 over international waters of the Black Sea.A state-owned Pobeda Airline Boeing 737-8LJ flying from Istanbul to Moscow crossed paths with the RAF “spy plane” took evasive action by raising its altitude by 1,000ft, according to pro-Putin media outlets SHOT.

The British aircraft from RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire was “conducting reconnaissance for the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the area of international waters, where air traffic control is provided by specialists from Russia,” reported the outlet.

“The Boeing did not request entry into this sector, which is considered a violation of airspace use.

“Due to the spy plane, a Pobeda flight, which was flying from Istanbul to [Moscow] Vnukovo, was forced to increase its altitude by 300 metres].”

In fact, military aircraft in international airspace are not legally required to ask Russia for permission to fly here.

Data on the flights suggests that the aircraft were already at safe altitudes – 2,500ft apart – despite the Russian claim that evasive action was taken.

The RAF plane flew to international waters off Sochi – Russia’s largest resort with a Putin official residence – before returning to its home base, reported Russian outlet AIF.

The claims came as Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky was coming under intense pressure from the Trump Administration to agree to a peace deal seen as favouring Russia.

This in particular involves major territorial losses.”It felt like the US was trying to sell us in different ways the Russian desire to take the whole of Donbas and that the Americans wanted Zelensky to accept all of it in the phone call,” a Ukrainian official told Axios.

The latest version of the draft agreement is “harsher” to Ukraine after the trip to see Putin by US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law.

A Ukrainian source said: “There are major things about territory which need to be discussed more: who controls what, who stays where, who withdraws, and if Ukraine withdraws from the contact line, how to make sure that Russia does the same and [doesn’t continue] with the fighting.”

This comes as Sir Keir Starmer revealed a £100 million deal to aid Ukraine by releasing frozen Russian assets in Europe is just days away.

In overnight strikes, a downed Ukrainian drone hit a residential block in Russian city Cheboksary.A child was among nine people wounded.The Ukrainians were attacking a plant producing satellite receivers and antennas for the GLONASS, GPS and Galileo systems, as well as Comet modules, used in Shahed kamikaze drones and Kalibr and Iskander-M missiles.

Ten explosions were heard over the city Ryazan – a key Russian military city.