US comments on what can be seen on video with drone incident in Black Sea
Ned Price, the US State Department spokesman, said that a video of the incident in the Black Sea involving an MQ-9 drone and two Russian SU-24 fighters shows the "unsafe and unprofessional" nature of the actions of Russian pilots.
Source: European Pravda correspondent, citing Price in an interview with the MSNBC channel.
"The video shows the Russian pilot behaving in a manner that looks almost entirely uncontrolled and essentially running into the unmanned US aircraft, forcing the US military to down it over the Black Sea," he said.
According to the representative of the State Department, "these types of encounters, these types of reckless manoeuvres on the part of the Russians, have the potential to lead to something much more dangerous – they have the potential to put the United States in direct contact with Russia".
He clarified that the video of the incident is planned to be published, but this decision is made by the Ministry of Defence "taking into account resources and methods".
"We do not want to do anything that could hinder or impair our ability to collect the type of information these types of aircraft are deployed to do. But I want to say that we should always take with a very large grain of salt everything we hear from the Russian Federation. Of course, what we have heard is complete nonsense," Price said.
According to the American side, Russian planes dropped aviation fuel on the American MQ-9 on 14 March, after which one of them collided with a drone, damaging its propeller. As a result, the drone crashed into the Black Sea.
Earlier on Wednesday, Nikolai Patrushev, Russian Security Council Secretary, said that Russia will try to find the wreckage of the drone.
According to the estimates of the American side, the Russian SU-27 was damaged during a collision with an MQ-9. This contradicts the approval of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, which says both of its planes "didn't come into contact" with the drone.
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