The Pentagon on Thursday released video of what it said was a Russian fighter jet dumping fuel on a U.S. Air Force surveillance drone before the warplane clipped the drone’s propeller in international airspace, leading to its crash in the Black Sea and raising tensions between Moscow and Washington over the war in Ukraine.

The U.S. military's declassified 42-second color footage shows a Russian Su-27 approaching the back of the MQ-9 Reaper drone and releasing fuel as it passes, the Pentagon said. Dumping the fuel appeared to be aimed at blinding the drone's optical instruments to drive it from the area.

On a second approach, either the same jet or another Russian fighter that had been shadowing the MQ-9 struck the drone’s propeller, damaging a blade, according to the U.S. military, which said it then ditched the unmanned aircraft in the sea.

The video excerpt released by the Pentagon does not show events before or after the apparent fuel-dumping confrontation and does not show the Russian warplane striking the drone.

Russia said its fighters didn’t strike the drone and claimed the unmanned aerial vehicle went down after making a sharp maneuver.

At a briefing on Thursday, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said that video "clearly demonstrated our narrative of what happened" and "decimates the Russian lie about" their characterization of the incident.

"It is not uncommon at all for us to release imagery of these intercepts, we've done it plenty of times before ... to lay bare and to make clear to the rest of the world the manner in which the Russians have been just flat-out lying, flat-out lying, about their accounts," he said in explaining the process of releasing the video.

Kirby said that they do not know whether the downing of the drone was intentional, only reiterating that the U.S. does not seek conflict with Russia. 

"It is not clear to us that the pilots intended to strike the drone," Kirby said. " At best, it's reckless flying. At worst, it's reckless and incompetent."

"We do mean to continue to support Ukraine, we do mean to bolster our presence and our deterrence capability along NATO's eastern flank, and these kinds of flights in international airspace over over international sea space will continue in support of those objectives," he added.

Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said it was important to release the video “to demonstrate publicly what type of actions the Russians had taken.”

“Our words and our actions speak for themselves, and similarly, Russia's inaccurate information, false information, obfuscation, grasping at straws, changing narratives also speaks for itself,” Ryder said.

Asked Thursday if Russia would try to recover the drone debris, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters the decision was up to the military. “If they consider it necessary to do so in the Black Sea for the benefit of our interests and our security, they will do it,” he said. Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said Wednesday that an attempt would be made.

U.S. officials have expressed confidence that nothing of military value would remain from the drone even if Russia managed to retrieve the wreckage. They left open the possibility of trying to recover portions of the downed $32 million aircraft, which they said crashed into waters that were 4,000 to 5,000 feet deep, although the U.S. does not have any ships in the area.

"There likely wasn't going to be a whole lot left of it to recover," Kirby said Thursday.

Russia and NATO member countries routinely intercept each other’s warplanes, but the drone incident marked the first time since the Cold War that a U.S. aircraft went down during such a confrontation, raising concerns it could bring the United States and Russia closer to a direct conflict.

Moscow has repeatedly voiced concern about U.S. intelligence flights near the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014 and illegally annexed.

The top U.S. and Russian defense and military leaders spoke Wednesday about the destruction of the drone, underscoring the event's seriousness.

The calls between U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, as well as between Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of Russian General Staff, were the first since October.

The Russian Defense Ministry said in its report of the call with Austin that Shoigu accused the U.S. of provoking the incident by ignoring flight restrictions the Kremlin had imposed because of its military operations in Ukraine.

The Kremlin argues that by providing weapons to Ukraine and sharing intelligence information with Kyiv, the U.S. and its allies have effectively become engaged in the war, now in its 13th month.

Such U.S. actions “are fraught with escalation of the situation in the Black Sea area,” the Defense Ministry said, warning that Moscow “will respond in kind to all provocations.”

The MQ-9, which has a 66-foot wingspan, includes a ground control station and satellite equipment. It is capable of carrying munitions, but Pentagon spokesman Ryder would not say whether the ditched drone had been armed.

The video's release is the latest example of the Biden administration making public intelligence findings over the course of the war. The administration has said it wants to highlight Russian malicious activity as well as plans for Russian misinformation operations so allies remain clear-eyed about Moscow’s intent.

"The video's pretty darn conclusive about what happened," Kirby said Thursday. "And it absolutely just decimates the Russian lie about what they said happened, or what they said didn't happen. It's pretty darn obvious when you look at that video that that fighter jet hit our drone."

"We can't get between the ears of the Russian pilot and know what the intent was there in terms of striking the drone," he continued. "I don't know that we'll ever know. What we do know, and what is clearly evident, is that this was intentional harassment. It was intentional dumping of fuel to try to disrupt the flight profile of that MQ-9 and it was intentionally aggressive, extremely aggressive flying."

"It is entirely possible that the pilot did not mean to strike the drone," he acknowledged, "But frankly, he shouldn't have been in the same airspace as the drone anyway. The drone was acting in accordance with international law, doing absolutely nothing wrong, so there was no reason for a Russian fighter jet to be that close to to a U.S. unmanned aircraft."

Kirby declined to say what the drone was surveilling, nor did he give away the precise location of where the drone was shot down.

The White House deferred to Austin on the decision to release it, with the Pentagon and President Joe Biden’s national security aides agreeing it was important to let the world see what happened, according to an administration official familiar with the decision-making process. The official, who requested anonymity to discuss the deliberations, said it took time to go through the declassification process and insisted the administration was not concerned it would further escalate tensions with Russia.

Because the video does not show the actual collision, some involved in the decision to release the footage wondered whether the Russians would seize on that as proof there was no contact between the fighter jet and the drone, according to another official familiar with the discussions about making it public. Those concerns were overcome when the Pentagon explained that the video showed the immediate aftermath and damage to the drone’s propeller, which only could have come from a collision, according to the second official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to disclose the details.