MOSCOW, March 15. /TASS/. Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov told the US side that Moscow "will continue to make sure that no one to breaks into Russia’s waters" in regards to the MQ-9 drone incident over the Black Sea.
"I’ve been saying the same in regards to the Navy or the Air Force, who often test and seek to reveal the Russian air defense, to see where our vulnerabilities are, to test if we are ready to repel a potential attack or have some kind of weakness. I warned them against such actions, I said that we will continue to make sure that no one breaks into the waters that belong to the Russian Federation," he said on the Russian TV Wednesday.
"In this case, if you note the [Russian] Defense Ministry’s statement, it says that our military have defined this zone as a special military operation zone via international channels, and did everything thing in order to prevent such incidents," the diplomat added.
Antonov underscored that US Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried said nothing on the question about Washington’s hypothetical reaction, should a similar incident occur in the US airspace.
"I provided a simple, clear example: if a Russian drone ended up near San Francisco or New York, what the US Armed Forces’ reaction would have been? Of course, the reaction would have been brutal, intransigent, they would not have allowed a breach of the US airspace. […] She was silent," the envoy noted.
Previously, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that the Russian Aerospace Forces detected a US MQ-9 drone flying near the Crimean Peninsula. The drone was reportedly flying with its transponder turned off and "in violation of the boundaries of the temporary airspace use area, defined in order to carry out the special military operation, which has been conveyed to all airspace users and published in accordance to the international norms." The Defense Ministry added that the drone’s abrupt maneuvering caused it to lose control, lose altitude and crash into the water. Russian jet fighters did not use its weapons and did not collide with the drone, and successfully returned to their bases, the Ministry said.