Many questions dominate the last twenty-four hours , around the event of the downing of the American drone by a Russian fighter aircraft , over the Black Sea , on Tuesday evening (14/4). Many are those who thought that this event would trigger the beginning of the West ‘s involvement in the war in Ukraine , which almost no one would want, according to Deutsche Welle.
The US, for its part, is talking about dropping fuel on the unmanned MQ 9 Reaper drone , while it was performing a routine reconnaissance flight in international airspace, from two Russian Su-27 fighters , one of which allegedly touched the propeller of it, and were forced to throw it into the sea.
Pat Ryder , spokesman for the US Pentagon , said during his statements that the evaluation of what exactly happened is ongoing .
“I think based on the actions of the Russian pilots it is clear that they were unsafe and unprofessional. They speak for themselves. What we saw again were fighter jets dropping fuel in front of the drone and then getting close enough to actually destroy its propeller. We estimate that some damage was probably caused to the Russian aircraft as well,” he said.
For its part , the Russian Ministry of Defense denies from the beginning that the Russian fighter jets are responsible for what happened, but they took responsibility for the fact that they intercepted it, without, however, accepting that they ” touched ” it on the propeller , or that they dropped fuel .
Moscow’s ambassador to Washington , Anatoly Antonov , even openly accuses the US of using drones to collect data on behalf of the Ukrainians.
According to information from the Russian news agency TASS , he claims that it is obvious that the US is collecting information, which will later be used by the Kiev regime to attack Russian forces.
“What are they doing thousands of miles away from the US? The answer is obvious, they are collecting information that will later be used by the Kiev regime to attack our armed forces and our territory,” he said.
“Unfortunately, the Russians see the Black Sea as their own lake,” said political analyst Tom Koraki , head of the Center for Strategic and International Studies .
“From a legal point of view, these are international waters. They don’t really like that fact, but certainly in terms of international law it protects the United States from any kind of claim that they entered Russian airspace or anything like that,” he added.
On CNNi, John Kirby , spokesman for the White House, states that for its part the US will take measures to ” recover ” the drone , and that in general terms they do not expect an escalation.
Source: cnn
