After the crash of an unmanned military drone over the Black Sea, the US military has released footage of the incident in a dispute with Russia. It shows a Russian fighter jet dumping fuel as it approaches the US drone and then flying extremely close. On a second approach, the Russian Su-27 jet dumped fuel again and collided with the drone, the US command center for Europe said on Thursday. However, the collision cannot be seen in the video. According to US information, the camera failed for around a minute. Afterwards, the partially damaged propeller of the drone can be seen in the video.
Washington thus supports the account that a Russian fighter jet rammed the drone, which is why it was no longer manoeuvrable and the US military had to bring it down. Moscow has denied this account. The incident and subsequent dispute fueled fears of an escalation between Washington and Moscow. In view of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, the situation is particularly tense and there is great fear that the two great powers, the USA and Russia, could get into a direct military confrontation. According to US information, the MQ-9 drone was flying in international airspace over the Black Sea on Tuesday when two Russian fighter jets began an intercept maneuver. One of the jets damaged the drone’s propeller. The two jets stayed near the drone for 30 to 40 minutes and dumped fuel over it before the collision, and they also flew directly in front of it several times, the US military said.
The USA therefore complained that the Russian pilots acted “unprofessionally”, “unsafely” and “recklessly”. Russia’s Defense Ministry, on the other hand, denied any responsibility for the crash. “The Russian warplanes did not use any onboard weapons, did not come into contact with the unmanned aerial vehicle and returned safely to their home airport,” said a statement distributed by the state agency TASS. Air Force Su-27 jets took off to identify an unknown intruder over the Black Sea. The on-board radio was switched off and the drone was heading for the Russian border, it said. During a sharp evasive maneuver, she rapidly lost height and fell.
Disclosure of the material follows a pattern Americans have seen in recent months. With regard to the Ukraine conflict – before the start of the war and since – the US government has repeatedly released and declassified intelligence information in a targeted manner in order to refute Russia’s claims and expose falsehoods from the Kremlin on the international stage. The incident over the Black Sea had recently increased the already high tensions between the two countries. Immediately after the action, the US State Department hired the Russian ambassador in Washington in protest. Mutual recriminations followed on the open stage. Among other things, Russia accused the United States of using the drone to collect secret service information that Kiev used in the Ukraine war “to attack our armed forces and our territory.”
