Russia seeks to retrieve remains of U.S. drone from Black Sea

Moscow, Russia | XINHUA |  Russia will try to retrieve the wreckage of a U.S. surveillance drone that crashed into the Black Sea on Tuesday, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said Wednesday.

“I don’t know if we will be able to get the remains or not, but it is a must to do it and we will do it. I hope, of course, it will be a success,” Patrushev told a Russian TV program.

There are technical possibilities for Russia to find and study the wreckage of the drone, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergei Naryshkin said on the program.

The United States is conducting intelligence activities in the Black Sea “very actively, using all means” and Russia knows about the U.S. goals in detail, Naryshkin said.

Russia-U.S. relations are “at their lowest point, in a very deplorable state,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday, commenting on the drone incident.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been informed of the situation, and there were no Moscow-Washington contacts at the highest level over the incident, Peskov told a daily briefing.

Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov on Tuesday called the incident “a provocation,” stressing that “we must be very careful in our actions given the events that are taking place in Eastern Europe.”

According to the Russian Defense Ministry on Tuesday, Russian fighter jets were scrambled to identify a U.S. MQ-9 drone approaching the Russian state border, and the unmanned aerial vehicle crashed into the Black Sea due to its own sharp maneuvering. ■