MOSCOW.- Russia’s defense minister has ordered his officials to prepare a “response” to US drone flights over the Black Sea, the ministry said on Friday, in an apparent warning that Moscow could take strong action against US reconnaissance planes. USA.
The ministry noted the recent “increase in activity” of US drones over the Black Sea and noted that they “carry out intelligence and guidance of precision weapons supplied to the Ukrainian military by Western countries to attack Russian facilities.”
“This demonstrates greater involvement of the United States and other NATO countries in the conflict in Ukraine on the side of the kyiv regime,” the ministry said in a statement.
He also said that “this type of flight significantly increases the likelihood of incidents involving Russian military aircraft, which increases the risk of direct confrontation between the alliance and the Russian Federation.”
“NATO members will be responsible for this,” he added.
According to the ministry, the head of Defense, Andrei Belousov, has ordered the General Staff to “make proposals on operational response measures to provocations.”
Washington and Moscow have clashed before over the presence of US drones in the Black Sea. In 2023, a Russian fighter jet damaged an American drone in the area, causing it to crash. A new such incident could further fuel tensions over the war in Ukraine.
On March 14, 2023, a Russian Air Force Su-27 fighter jet intercepted and damaged a US MQ-9 Reaper drone, which crashed into the Black Sea. It was the first direct confrontation between the forces of both countries since the Cold War.
The Pentagon and U.S. European Command said then that two Russian Su-27s dropped fuel on the MQ-9, which was conducting routine surveillance in international airspace. Moscow, for its part, indicated that the aircraft was flying near the Russian border and entered an area that had been marked as exclusionary by Russian authorities.
Russia has banned flights in large areas near Crimea. Since it illegally annexed the peninsula in 2014 and long before its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow has accused US surveillance planes of flying too close to its borders while ignoring its warnings.
Friday’s statement followed a Ukrainian attack on Sevastopol over the weekend using US-made ATACMS missiles, which left four dead and around 150 wounded, according to Russian officials.
The Kremlin said Washington was directly involved in the operation by providing intelligence and targeting information and warned of possible retaliation.
Source: With information from AP
