Washington and Moscow on Wednesday gave conflicting accounts of how a U.S. surveillance drone crashed into the Black Sea after being intercepted by Russian fighter jets. “A Russian pilot actually struck the drone,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told CNN, adding that while Russian jet interceptions are not uncommon, this is the first time since the war began that a confrontation has ended in a physical collision of this kind. Given the depth of the seabed where drone hit the water, he said it was unclear whether the aircraft could ever be recovered but said U.S. officials were reviewing footage collected around the incident.
Kremlin officials insisted that the Russian jets did not collide with the U.S. drone. “There was no contact,” Moscow’s ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, said Wednesday. “This drone made a sharp U-turn and crashed,” he said, accusing the United States of flying a drone provocatively close to Russian-controlled territory.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
But his passion has put him in a precarious position, Robyn Dixon reports. An intimidating transcript of his private phone conversations was delivered to him — via messages on his YouTube page — in what Korotkov interpreted as a threat from the Kremlin.
Afraid for his safety, Korotkov has fled Russia. “The hardest thing was to finally realize that emigration was the only solution, and to give up my past life and start from zero,” he said.
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