Russia will seek to recover downed U.S. drone, Kremlin says
Source: Washington Post
NATIONAL SECURITY
Russia will seek to recover downed U.S. drone, Kremlin says
U.S. officials said that, while measures were taken to thwart Moscow’s ability to glean any intelligence from the MQ-9 Reaper, those steps are ‘not foolproof’
By Karen DeYoung and Dan Lamothe
March 15, 2023 at 1:02 p.m. EDT
Moscow said Wednesday that it will try to retrieve the wreckage of a U.S. surveillance drone that crashed into the Black Sea after a collision with a Russian jet fighter.
“I don’t know if we can get them or not,” Kremlin Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said of the drone fragments, “but it has to be done, and we’ll surely engage in it. I hope for success, of course.”
Patrushev said that the presence of the MQ-9 Reaper drone in part of Russia’s self-declared Black Sea exclusion zone on Tuesday was “proof” that the United States military is “directly participating” in the Ukraine War. U.S. officials, while arming and providing intelligence for the Ukrainian war effort, have repeatedly rejected Russian charges of direct U.S. involvement.
A U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the matter remains highly sensitive, said that, after Tuesday’s collision badly disabled the unarmed drone, Air Force personnel brought it down approximately 56 nautical miles southwest of Crimea’s southern tip. The peninsula, which the Kremlin annexed from Ukraine in 2014, is home to the Russian navy’s Black Sea Fleet and an array of other military assets. Ukrainian leaders, having vowed to retake the strategically important landmass, have carried out a handful of attacks there.
{snip}
Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia, contributed to this report.
By Karen DeYoung
Karen DeYoung is associate editor and senior national security correspondent for The Post. In more than three decades at the paper, she has served as bureau chief in Latin America and in London and as correspondent covering the White House, U.S. foreign policy and the intelligence community. Twitter https://twitter.com/karendeyoung1
By Dan Lamothe
Dan Lamothe joined The Washington Post in 2014 to cover the U.S. military. He has written about the Armed Forces for 15 years, traveling extensively, embedding with each service and covering combat in Afghanistan. His reporting about the 2021 attack on the Capitol was part of a project that earned the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Twitter https://twitter.com/danlamothe
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/03/15/us-drone-russia/
“I don’t know if we can get them or not,” Kremlin Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said of the drone fragments, “but it has to be done, and we’ll surely engage in it. I hope for success, of course.”
washingtonpost.com
Russia will seek to recover downed U.S. drone, Kremlin says
U.S. officials said that, while measures were taken to thwart Moscow’s ability to glean any intelligence from the MQ-9 Reaper,
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Ukraine! Russia is asking for it. Russia has opened the door to 100% equip Ukraine!! 
