‘This is bad because they constantly stated that they are a responsible power interested in strategic stability,’ says the Russian foreign minister
Russia claimed on Wednesday that the US is looking for “provocation” in order to escalate its “confrontational approaches.”
“They completely ignore the fact that, following the start of a special military operation, our military declared the relevant areas of the Black Sea, adjacent to the coast in some places, as areas with limited status for use by any aircraft,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel.
According to Lavrov, Washington’s ignorance of the fact indicates that it is “constantly looking for some kind of provocation to escalate its confrontational approaches.”
“This is problematic because they have repeatedly stated that they are a responsible power concerned with strategic stability. By the way, Secretary of State (Antony) Blinken told me this during a meeting in India. However, words do not always correspond to actions “Lavrov went on to say.
According to Lavrov, any incident that sparks a conflict between “two great powers” always poses “very serious risks” to global security.
Two Russian SU-27 fighter jets “conducted an unsafe and unprofessional intercept” of a US MQ-9 Reaper on Monday, including dumping fuel on the drone and flying in front of it “in a reckless, environmentally unsound, and unprofessional manner,” according to the US European Command.
When one of the SU-27 jets struck the propeller of the MQ-9 Reaper, the drone’s operators were forced to bring it down in international waters in the Black Sea.
Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, previously stated that the drone attempted to gather reconnaissance information for transmission to Ukraine in preparation for strikes against Russia.
Russia denied that its fighter jets collided with the drone that Washington accused Moscow of downing.
