The Russian ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Antonovaffirmed that his country “is not interested in confrontation”, after being summoned to the State Department for the incident registered yesterday in the Black Sea that forced the United States to shoot down its own drone after a collision with an Armored Russian naval fleet in Crimea in the face of Ukrainian attacks: this is the key mission of the SU-27 fighter that collided with the US Reaper, which Moscow denies.
In recent times “contacts with colleagues from the State Department refer only to protests and negative signals towards the Russian Federation“said Antonov, quoted by the official Russian agency TASS, after leaving the headquarters of US diplomacy.
“This is what I told you and I also told you that the Russian side is not interested in confrontation. The Russian side is interested in pragmatic relations with the United States in the interest of the Russian and American peoples,” he added. The ambassador noted that the US side lodged a protest “over, as they said, ‘the unprofessional actions of the Russian side’.”
“The most important thing, I think, is that US planes and ships have nothing to do next to the borders of the Federation,” he stressed, adding: “Can you imagine that a plane, a (Russian) drone like that appears near from New York or San Francisco? Can you imagine what the reaction of the US media or the Pentagon would be to that drone.”
He explained that the US MQ-9 drone that crashed in the Black Sea is a multipurpose device “capable of carrying 1,700 kilograms of explosives.”
“We start from the basis that the United States will refrain from speculation in the media space and will put an end to flights along the Russian borders,” Antonov said, quoted by the Telegram channel of the Russian embassy in Washington, when answering questions from the press
He added that Russia will regard as “frankly hostile” any action with US weapons and equipment. “I remind you that Washington has supplied kyiv with production for military use in the amount of 33,000 million dollars. It is obvious that the United States is precisely escalating the situation that could lead to a direct armed conflict,” the diplomat warned.
This Tuesday the Russian Ministry of Defense denied any contact between its Su-27 fighters and the drone that the United States had to shoot down in international waters of the Black Sea. “As a result of a sharp maneuver at around 09:30 Moscow time (06:30 GMT), the MQ-9 unmanned aircraft entered into an uncontrolled flight with loss of altitude and collided with the surface of the water,” the Russian military statement said.
The official note stresses that “the weapons on board the Russian fighters were not used” and that the Su-27s “did not come into contact with the aircraft and returned safely to their airfield.” Russian radar detected the US drone near the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea with the transponder switched off.
In addition, Defense assures that the MQ-9 violated the border of the airspace used provisionally by Russia in the framework of its “special military operation” in Ukraine, of which Moscow informed all interested parties at the time in accordance with international standards. . For that reason, Russian aviation was forced to send their fighters in order to identify the offender.