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Putin charged that the U.S. aircraft's apparent mission was to monitor the Russian military's response to the British destroyer.

"It was clearly a provocation, a complex one involving not only the British but also the Americans," he said, adding that Moscow was aware of the U.S. intentions and responded accordingly to avoid revealing sensitive data.

The Russian leader lamented that the move closely followed his summit with U.S. President Joe Biden in Geneva this month.

"The world is undergoing a radical change," he said. "Our U.S. partners realize that, and that's why the Geneva meeting took place. But on the other hand, they are trying to secure their monopolist stance, resulting in threats and destructive action such as drills, provocations and sanctions."

Even though the West doesn't recognize Crimea as part of Russia, Putin said the naval incident took the controversy to a new level.

"They don't recognize something — OK, they can keep refusing to recognize it," he said. "But why conduct such provocations?"

Putin insisted Russia would firmly defend its interests.

"We are fighting for ourselves and our future on our own territory," he said. "It's not us who traveled thousands of kilometers (miles) to come to them; it's them who have come to our borders and violated our territorial waters."

Dmitri Trenin, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, warned that last week's Black Sea incident presages a new, riskier level of confrontation.

"Fresh attempts to expose Russian 'red line' deterrence as hollow -- whether on the ground, in the air, or at sea -- would push Moscow to defend what it cannot give up without losing its self-respect," Trenin said in a commentary.

"This would almost inevitably lead to clashes and casualties, which would carry the risk of further escalation. Should this happen, Russia-NATO confrontation would deteriorate literally to the point of brinkmanship, a truly bleak scenario."

Stop Press: BBC News has actually covered the protest, although it describes the number of protestors as "thousands" and is at pains to point out that the numbers aren't just made up by anti-lockdown protestors: "Whether it was austerity or Palestine, lockdown or the NHS, campaigners of all ages and backgrounds wanted to make their voices heard today."

Stop Press 2: The Evening Standard covered the protest in a surprisingly balanced way. The Guardian, on the other hand, did not.