A Venezuelan fighter jet “aggressively shadowed” an American intelligence plane in international airspace, according to US authorities who on Sunday blamed Russia’s “irresponsible military support” of the “illegitimate regime.”

The US military on Sunday released video and still images that it says shows the SU-30 Flanker “at an unsafe distance” from a US EP-3 aircraft, “jeopardizing the crew & aircraft” over the Caribbean sea.

It happened Friday — the same day that the Trump administration announced it was sanctioning four top officials in Venezuela’s military counterintelligence agency.

The US Southern Command insisted that the US plane was targeted while it was “performing a multi-nationally recognized & approved mission in international airspace” over the Caribbean.

The military said in a statement that the “Russian-made fighter aggressively shadowed the EP-3 at an unsafe distance in international airspace for a prolonged period of time, endangering the safety of the crew and jeopardizing the EP-3 mission.”

In a series of two posts on Twitter, the southern command, which oversees military activities in the Caribbean, also attacked Vladimir Putin for supporting Venezuala’s leader, Nicolas Maduro.

“This action demonstrates #Russia’s irresponsible military support to Maduro’s illegitimate regime & underscores Maduro’s recklessness & irresponsible behavior, which undermines int’l rule of law & efforts to counter illicit trafficking,” it tweeted.

Venezuela’s Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez says the US plane entered Venezuelan airspace without prior notification and endangered commercial flights from the country’s main airport.

With Post wires