The US should use “balanced force that will not prompt a world war and the use of nuclear weapons. “There has to be punishment, financial and demonstrative,” he told Al Jazeera. Washington should respond to the drone’s downing with “balanced” force, Romanenko said. The drone’s downing was retaliation for the damage inflicted upon a key Russian aircraft in late February, says Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.Ī drone attack in an airfield in pro-Russian Belarus north of the Ukrainian border targeted one of only nine B-50 planes that can identify the locations of Ukrainian air defence units.īelarusian “ guerrilla fighters” claimed responsibility for the attack, and the damaged plane was taken back to Russia. Russians are “morbidly obsessed with responses”, according to Ukraine’s top military analyst. So, has the Reaper’s downing become a casus belli, and is there a risk of a direct military confrontation between the United States and Russia? “Flights of US strategic unmanned vehicles near the coast of Crimea are of a provocative character creating a pretext for the escalation in the Black Sea zone,” it said in a statement. It warned that the incident may lead to an “escalation” in the Black Sea basin. Russia’s defence Ministry stated that the Su-27 jets scrambled the drone as it was flying towards the Russian border and had its transponder off. Moscow said it had warned the US not to enter the zone of what the Kremlin calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine. The US released a video filmed by the drone that was forced to crash in the Black Sea after it was intercepted by two Russian fighter jets in international airspace ⤵️ Moscow has repeatedly stressed that it is concerned about Crimea’s safety – some Western observers would say Russia is rather paranoid – and the need for a “land bridge” between Russia and the Black Sea peninsula was one of the main reasons the Kremlin started the war. Tuesday’s incident took place off the coast of Crimea, the jewel in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s crown that had been annexed from Ukraine in 2014. It was the most significant direct clash between superpowers since the Ukraine war began last February. It said the Reaper was a “reconnaissance drone” and carried no arms, although the unmanned aircraft with a wingspan of 26 metres (85 feet) was designed as a “hunter-killer” armed with laser-guided bombs and missiles. Then the Su-27 hit the Reaper’s propeller, causing it to tumble into the sea, the Pentagon said. One of the Russian Su-27s released a stream of jet fuel on the MQ-9 Reaper drone, causing its cameras to shut off. Two Russian fighter jets approached a US drone flying in the cloudless, azure sky over international waters in the Black Sea on Tuesday morning. Kyiv, Ukraine – It looked like a deliberate manoeuvre by a skilled pilot that led to the first direct military clash between the United States and Russia since Moscow invaded Ukraine.
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