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Ben Wallace responds after US denounces crash as ‘unsafe and unprofessional’; Russian ambassador to US says Moscow does not want ‘confrontation’
Responding to the drone incident, British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has urged Moscow to respect international airspace.
“The key here is that all parties respect international airspace and we urge the Russians to do so,” Wallace told Reuters at the DSEI Japan defence show in Chiba prefecture, near Tokyo. “The Americans have said they think it is unprofessional,” he added.
A Russian fighter collided with a US Reaper drone, forcing it down into the Black Sea, in what US forces called an “unsafe and unprofessional” intercept. A US European Command statement said the collision happened just after 7am on Tuesday, when two Russian Su-27 fighter jets flew up to the MQ-9 Reaper drone over international waters west of Crimea. The statement said the Russian pilots sought to disrupt the US aircraft before the collision.
The US state department summoned the Russia’s ambassador over the drone incident. The White House said the drone’s downing was unique and would be raised directly by state department officials with their Russian counterparts.
The Russian ambassador to the US called the incident a ‘provocation’. Russia’s RIA state news agency cited Anatoly Antonov as saying, “We do not want any confrontation between the United States and Russia. We are in favour of building pragmatic relations”. Antonov made the comments after being summoned to the US state department.
The Pentagon said the drone was on a routine ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) mission. US air force Brig Gen Pat Ryders said Russia did not have the drone. But he declined to say whether Russia was seeking the wreckage so that its military intelligence could dissect it.
Russia’s defence ministry maintained that its fighters “did not use airborne weapons and did not come into contact” with the US drone. The ministry said fighters from its air defence forces were raised into the air to identify the drone, which the ministry said was heading “in direction of the state border of the Russian Federation”.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his military chiefs have agreed to keep defending the besieged eastern city of Bakhmut. Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, said the defence of Bakhmut was of “paramount strategic importance”. He said: “It is key to the stability of the defence of the entire front.”
AFP journalists in Eastern Ukraine reported seeing white phosphorus fired from Russian positions on an uninhabited road leading to nearby Bakhmut. Weapons containing phosphorus are incendiary arms whose use against civilians is banned, but they can be deployed against military targets under a 1980 convention signed in Geneva. The Guardian is unable to verify these reports from AFP.
The UN was scrambling Tuesday to ensure a Ukrainian grain exports deal aimed to ease the global food crisis can continue, but its fate remained unclear days before the 18 March expiry date. Talks between top Russian and United Nations officials in Geneva ended Monday with Moscow saying it would not oppose prolonging the so-called Black Sea Grain Initiative, as many had feared.
At least one person was killed and three people were injured in shelling of Kramatorsk, in the Donetsk region on Tuesday morning, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. The Ukrainian president said six high-rise buildings were damaged, adding: “The evil state continues to fight against the civilian population. Every strike that takes an innocent life must result in a lawful and just sentence that punishes murder.
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