The United States has responded to Russia finding the drone its fighter jet shot down over the black sea, even as Moscow says Washington’s account is not true and issues a threat of attack on further provocations.
Russia fighter jets on Tuesday intercepted and shot down a drone belonging to the United States.
Moscow said it intends to recover the wreckage of the drone. “I don’t know if we can recover [it] or not, but we will certainly have to do that, and we will deal with it,” said Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s security council, on Wednesday. “I certainly hope for success.”
However, US officials say the debris could have sunken deep in water, making recovery impossible, and even if they succeed, parts recovered would have no real intelligence value.
The head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, Sergei Naryshkin, said Russia had the technological means to recover the debris of the MQ-9 Reaper drone from the sea floor. The crash site is believed to be in international waters off the west coast of occupied Crimea, where Russia has naval bases and airfields.
The US navy currently does not have any warships in the Black Sea, however, America has “a lot of allies and friends in the area”, Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff noted. According to John Kirby, the spokesman for the national security council, the drone wreck might not be salvageable.
“We will work through recovery operations. That’s US property. But it probably broke up. There’s probably not a lot to recover, frankly,” he said. “As far as the loss of any sensitive intelligence … we did take mitigating measures. So we are quite confident that whatever was of value is no longer of value.”
“It has not been recovered. And I’m not sure that we’re going to be able to recover it,” Kirby told CNN. “Where it fell into the Black Sea [is] very, very deep water. So we’re still assessing whether there can be any kind of recovery effort. There may not be.”
The area where the drone was shot down has a sea depth of about 5,000 feet deep (1524 meters), “so any recovery operation is very difficult at that depth, by anyone”, Milley said.
Did Russia Actually Shoot Down The American Drone
According to the United States, the drone was damaged on Tuesday morning by a Russian Su-27 fighter jet hitting its propeller after a pair of Su-27s hadspent at least half an hourtrying to disrupt the Reaper, by dumping fuel on it and flying in front of it.
However, Russia has denied its aircraft coming into contact with the drone and claimed that it crashed after making a “sharp maneuver”.
“It’s important that great powers be models of transparency and communication,” Lloyd Austin, the US defense secretary said speaking with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu, on Wednesday.
He noted that he had complained about “a pattern of risky and aggressive” behavior by Russian military pilots, adding that video and photographs of the incident were already being assessed for security reasons before been released.
Austin however said that the US account of the drone incident was true. “We will continue to fly and to operate wherever international law allows,” he added.
The Russian defense minister, Sergei Shoigu told Austin that America’s “increased” intelligence gathering against Russia had led to the drone incident. Moscow also warned that it would react “proportionately” to any future US “provocations”.
