Moscow on Wednesday said it would try to retrieve the wreckage of a US military drone that crashed over the Black Sea in a confrontation Washington blamed on two Russian fighter jets.
Russia also warned that it would react “proportionately” to any future US “provocations” as tensions simmered and Moscow denied its Su-27 military aircraft had clipped the propeller of the Reaper drone.
However, Washington was unbowed, with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin telling Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu that the US would continue flying “wherever international law allows.”
Photo: REUTERS
Moscow confirmed the call and said Washington had initiated it.
The Russia Ministry of Defense said US drone flights off the coast of Crimea “are provocative in nature, which creates preconditions for an escalation of the situation in the Black Sea zone.”
Meanwhile, Kyiv said the incident was evidence that the Kremlin wanted to draw the US into the Ukraine conflict.
Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said in televised remarks that Moscow would seek to retrieve the downed craft, but was unsure if the effort would be a success.
“It has to be done. And we will certainly work on it,” he said.
US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley told journalists that any recovery effort would be difficult, as the drone likely broke up and sank in an area where the water is up to 1,500m deep.
Even if Russia was able to recover the wreckage, the US took “mitigating measures” to protect sensitive information, he said.
“We are quite confident that whatever was of value is no longer of value,” Milley added.
The crash on Tuesday, which Washington said was the fault of reckless and unprofessional Russian conduct, further ratcheted up tensions between Moscow and Western allies, which have been soaring over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Patrushev said the incident was proof that the US is a direct party to fighting between Moscow and Kyiv, adding that Russia had a responsibility to “defend our independence and our sovereignty.”
Russia’s defense ministry said it had scrambled jets after detecting a US drone over the Black Sea, but denied causing the crash, saying the aircraft had lost control.
The Pentagon said the drone was on a routine mission when it was intercepted “in a reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner.”
Ukraine said the incident was “provoked by Russia” and cautioned that it signaled Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aim to “expand the conflict.”
“The purpose of this all-in tactic is to always be raising the stakes,” Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said on social media.
NATO diplomats in Brussels confirmed the incident, but said they did not expect it to immediately escalate into a further confrontation.
A Western military source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that diplomatic channels between Russia and the US could help limit any fallout.
The US and the Philippines plan to announce new sites as soon as possible for an expanded Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which gives the Western power access to military bases in the Southeast Asian country. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr last month granted the US access to four military bases, on top of five existing locations under the 2014 EDCA, amid China’s increasing assertiveness regarding the South China Sea and Taiwan. Speaking at the Basa Air Base in Manila, one of the existing EDCA sites, US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said the defense agreements between the two countries
‘DUAL PURPOSE’: Upgrading the port is essential for the Solomon Islands’ economy and might not be military focused, but ‘it is not about bases, it is about access,’ an analyst said The Solomon Islands has awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to a Chinese state company to upgrade an international port in Honiara in a project funded by the Asian Development Bank, a Solomon Islands official said yesterday. China Civil Engineering Construction Co (CCECC) was the only company to submit a bid in the competitive tender, Solomon Islands Ministry of Infrastructure Development official Mike Qaqara said. “This will be upgrading the old international port in Honiara and two domestic wharves in the provinces,” Qaqara said. Responding to concerns that the port could be deepened for Chinese naval access, he said there would be “no expansion.” The Solomon
CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS: The US destroyer’s routine operations in the South China Sea would have ‘serious consequences,’ the defense ministry said China yesterday threatened “serious consequences” after the US Navy sailed a destroyer around the disputed Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) in the South China Sea for the second day in a row, in a move Beijing claimed was a breach of its sovereignty and security. The warning came amid growing tensions between China and the US in the region, as Washington pushes back at Beijing’s growingly assertive posture in the South China Sea, a strategic waterway it claims virtually in its entirety. On Thursday, after the US sailed the USS Milius guided-missile destroyer near the Paracel Islands, China said its navy and
Seven stories above a shop floor hawking cheap perfume and nylon underwear, Thailand’s “shopping mall gorilla” sits alone in a cage — her home for 30 years despite a reignited row over her captivity. Activists around the world have long campaigned for the primate to be moved from Pata Zoo, on top of a Bangkok mall, with singer Cher and actor Gillian Anderson adding their voices in 2020. However, the family who owns Bua Noi — whose name translates as “little lotus” — have resisted public and government pressure to relinquish the critically endangered animal. The gorilla has lived at Pata for more
RSS