PARIS (AP) — Russian forces threatened to shoot down a French surveillance aircraft patrolling in international airspace over the Black Sea, a signal of increasingly aggressive behavior from Moscow, French defense officials said Thursday.

“Russian air traffic control threatened to shoot down a French aircraft in the Black Sea when we were in a free international zone where we patrol,” the French defense minister, Sébastien Lecornu, said on RTL radio.

A French military spokesman, Col. Pierre Gaudillière, said Lecornu was referring to an incident in mid-November that involved one of France’s four giant Airborne Warning and Control System, or AWACS, surveillance aircraft that was flying over international waters in the Black Sea.

Gaudillière described the incident as unprecedented for French pilots in that region.

“It was a particularly aggressive radio exchange,” he added. “It’s a first.”

Two other officials said the exchange was in English and that Russian air traffic control said its forces would “destroy” the French aircraft. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the classified details.

In his radio interview, Lecornu said Russia is returning to a “particularly aggressive” posture reminiscent of the former Soviet Union’s behavior during the Cold War.

“The behavior of Russia in 2024 bears no relation to what we saw in 2022 and, obviously, before the aggression in Ukraine,” the minister said.