US drones in the Black Sea: Russia threatens NATO with “direct confrontation” | War in Ukraine

Russia threatened Westerners on Friday with “direct confrontation” because of the “intensification” of American military drone flights in the Black Sea, off the coast of Ukraine, a few days after first threats targeting Washington following ‘a strike in annexed Crimea.

Moscow believes that the assistance provided to kyiv in terms of weapons, intelligence gathering and identification of targets on Russian territory has made the United States and its allies parties to the conflict in Ukraine, which the Kremlin exacerbated in February 2022 by launching its forces to attack its neighbor.

American drone flights in the Black Sea NATO and the Russian Federation”,”text”:”increase the likelihood of incidents in the airspace with aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces, which increases the risk of a direct confrontation between NATO and the Russian Federation Russia”}}”>increase the likelihood of incidents in the airspace with aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces, which increases the risk of a direct confrontation between theI’LL TAKE and the Russian Federationthe Russian Defense Ministry denounced in a statement.

NATO would be responsible”,”text”:”NATO countries would be responsible”}}”>The countries of theI’LL TAKE would be responsible for ithe warned, adding that Defense Minister Andrei Belousov had ordered the General Staff to take measures to respond quickly to provocations.

Because, according to the Russian ministry, American drones are used to the recognition and designation of targets for precision weapons supplied to the Ukrainian Armed Forces by Westerners.

After having long refused, for fear of provoking an escalation, Americans and Europeans have begun to authorize in recent weeks, under conditions, strikes with Western precision weapons on Russian territory to destroy sites and systems used to bomb Ukraine.

Russia had already threatened the United States with retaliation on June 24, accusing it of kill Russian childrenthe day after a strike in Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula bordered by the Black Sea and annexed by Moscow in 2014. The attack left four dead, including two children, and more than 150 injured by the debris of a missile shot down. above a coastal areaaccording to Moscow.

Because, according to the Kremlin, long-range ATACMS missile strikes cannot be carried out by Ukraine alone, as they require specialists, technologies and intelligence collected by the Americans.

In Washington, the Pentagon limited itself to saying on Monday that Ukraine makes his own decisions.

Reprisals

Already, at the beginning of June, citing reprisals, Russian President Vladimir Putin had threatened to deliver equivalent weapons to enemies of the West to attack their interests in other regions of the world.

And if the Russian fleet has numerical superiority in the Black Sea, it has lost numerous ships for more than two years, targeted by naval drone attacks successfully launched by kyiv.

Thanks to these strikes, the Ukrainian army repelled Russian warships and established a maritime corridor in the area to export its grain. It is now also trying to strike the important military base in Crimea, the rear base of the Russian war effort.

Faced with the Ukrainian strikes, the authorities installed by Moscow in Sevastopol, headquarters of the Russian Black Sea fleet, on Thursday asked each resident to now carry a tourniquet, a medical instrument used to stop hemorrhages.

Ukraine also regularly attacks Russian energy sites with drones in retaliation for bombings that have ravaged Ukrainian infrastructure, forcing kyiv to ration electricity across the country.

During the night from Thursday to Friday, an oil depot in the Tambov region, several hundred kilometers from the border, was attacked by a Ukrainian explosive drone, according to regional governor Maxime Egorov, causing a fire which was then extinct.

The Russian Defense Ministry, for its part, claimed to have intercepted 25 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory at night.

High-intensity fighting continues over a large part of the front, which stretches over approximately 1,000 km, particularly in the north-east and east.

For months, the Russian army has had the initiative. On May 10, it launched a new offensive in the northeast, in the Kharkiv region, facing a Ukrainian army lacking men and ammunition.

But according to kyiv, the Ukrainian forces are in a better position, now that Western aid, blocked for months, is reaching the troops deployed on the front.

Ammo consumption ratio was 1:7 [en faveur de l’armée russe, NDLR]today it is 1 to 3welcomed Friday to theAFP a source within the Ukrainian general staff.

A new mobilization must also replenish the Ukrainian ranks.