The spokesman for the National Security Council of the United States, John Creeby, attacks the decision of the Russian Defense Minister to award a medal to the Russian pilot who shot down the American UAV.
The downing of the UAV created another crisis between the two powers, this after Russia lied that it did not shoot down the aircraft.
Kirby said today (Thursday) to the media: “In the Navy I grew up in, you don’t want to hit anything. Hitting something is a bad thing.
I’m sorry, I have to talk about it, why would they (Russia, the Soviet Union), give a heroism award to a pilot who, at worst, maliciously endangered himself and US property and, at worst, just an idiot.”
As you may recall, Russia initially claimed that it was an accident and that the US was not supposed to be in that area – but the documentation clearly shows the Russian plane pouring fuel on the American drone which ultimately causes it to fall.
Moscow, as mentioned, denied that there was a conflict. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that the American drone was flying over the Black Sea towards the Russian border with transmitters turned off, forcing Russia to send fighter jets to detect the drone. According to them, the drone went into an uncontrolled flight and collided with the water “as a result of a sharp maneuver”. – Now it turns out that the Russian response was inaccurate.
In Russia, they said that they would collect the remains of the drone to study the incident – but the US military has already announced that they collected most of the findings under the suspicion that Russia will try to reveal secrets about the drone.