Harsh warning from Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin at the opening of the tenth meeting of the contact group on Ukraine, commenting on the collision between a Russian jet and a US drone over the Black Sea. "This dangerous episode, he said, is part of a model of aggressive, risky and unsafe actions by Russian pilots in international airspace: let me be clear, the United States will continue to fly and operate wherever international law allows. And it is up to Russia to use its military aircraft safely and professional"
The statement by US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on ABC TV was even more dry: "The message to the Russians was, 'don't do it again,'" he said.
Meanwhile, from Moscow, after the Russian ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, asked that the United States put an end to what he defined as "unacceptable military activities near Russian borders", the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, quoted by the Russian agency Ria Novosti.
indicated that there had been no high-level contacts between Russia and the United States over the incident that occurred yesterday in the skies over the Black Sea. National Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, for his part, said Russia would try to recover the remains of the crashed American drone.
"I don't know if we will be able to, but we have to try," Patrushev said.
In an interview with the BBC, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba noted that incidents such as the one involving Russian jets and a US drone over the Black Sea "are inevitable" until Russia leaves Crimea, specifying however that he does not expect any diplomatic escalation and describing the episode as a "routine incident".
"If the West wants to prove its weakness, it should certainly demonstrate its prudence after an incident like this, but I don't get the feeling that this is the mood in the capitals," Kuleba replied, answering the question whether the United States and other allies may become more cautious following the incident.
"The mood is not to step up,
physical or rhetorical pressure - from Russia".