Defense Minister Shoigu presents pilots who sank U.S. MQ-9 drone with state decorations
Russia’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has decorated the military pilots who intercepted the U.S. MQ-9 reconnaissance drone over the Black Sea.
The Russian pilots, said the Defense Ministry in a statement, “prevented the American UAV from violating the borders of the temporary airspace protocol area.”
The ministry has emphasized that all international airspace users had been informed about the provisional protocol in place since the start of the Ukraine war.
The Russian Defense Ministry has denied actual contact between the Russian Su-27 fighter planes and the drone, claiming the UAV had crashed as a result of its own abrupt maneuver.
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