Moscow said on Wednesday it would try to retrieve the wreckage of a US military drone that crashed over the Black Sea, in a confrontation Washington blamed two Russian warplanes. U.S. officials said the debris could be in water so deep that recovery is impossibleand would have no real intelligence value.
The Russian and American defense ministers and the military managers held rare phone calls Wednesday to discuss the incident. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told his US counterpart Lloyd Austin on Wednesday that operating drone flights near Crimea was provocative and could lead to an escalation, the Russian Defense Ministry said. Russia, the statement said, “had no interest in such a development but will in the future react in due proportion”.
Austin declined to provide any details about the conversation, including whether he criticized the Russian wiretapping. But he reiterated at a press conference that the United States intended to continue flying where international law allowed and required Russian military aircraft to operate in a safe and professional manner.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the incident was “under investigation”. Blinken declined to speak about the motive or intent behind the incident, saying he would allow the investigation to continue and that the United States is “in close coordination” with allies and partners on the matter.
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace accused Russia of acting “unprofessionally”. Wallace’s comments reflects an emerging Western view of it the extraordinary incident in the air was a one-off that did not immediately merit anything stronger than diplomatic complaints.
The Kremlin said earlier on Wednesday that relations with the United States were in a “deplorable state” and at an all-time low, after Washington accused Russia of shooting down one of its surveillance drones over the Black Sea.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian ground forces shot down a Russian warplane near the besieged eastern city of Bakhmut. a Ukrainian official have said. Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, also said that Kiev’s forces had made progress in the northern parts of the city.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, said that Russian forces had taken control of the settlement of Zaliznyanskoye and were expanding the encirclement of Bakhmut. Neither side’s claim to success in what has become the longest ongoing battle since the war began could be verified.
Former Soviet Moldova no longer receives Russian gas or endures the “extortion” imposed by gas giant Gazprom due to its difficulties in paying for supplies, said the country’s energy minister. Victor Parlicov, who spoke to TV8 on Wednesday night, said Gazprom had only provided supplies to Moldova’s Russian-backed separatist region of Transnistria since December, with none going to central authorities in Chisinau.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense is starting a new recruitment campaign on April 1, with the goal of recruiting 400,000 professional soldiers into the Russian army, according to a report. Russian military recruiting offices are trying to make up for their losses of specialized soldiers, such as tank drivers and gunners, according to a separate report.
Turkey’s parliament is “highly likely” to ratify Finland’s accession to NATO before mid-April, That is what two Turkish officials told Reuters. Sweden and Finland applied last year to join the defense pact after Russia invaded Ukraine but faced objections from Turkey.