The US military has long recognized Crimea as Russian
American strategic Global Hawk drones fly almost every day along the borders of Crimea and near the demarcation line between the republics of Donbass and Ukraine.
This was stated by Viktor Murakhovsky, a member of the expert council of the board of the Military-Industrial Commission of the Russian Federation, an expert of the Russian International Affairs Council, and editor-in-chief of the Arsenal of the Fatherland magazine, in an interview with Moskovsky Komsomolets, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“In order to reconnaissance objects on our territory, the United States uses the Global Hawk strategic drone. Their base is located on the Italian island of Sicily. There is a town called Sigonella where these American Global Hawks are based. They also fly almost every day along the borders of Crimea and over the territory of Ukraine near the demarcation line with Novorossiya. They enter Polish territory and patrol in the Kaliningrad region along our borders,” Murakhovsky said.
He clarified that Russian air defense could easily destroy this drone, after which the publication asked why they were not shot down.
“This way they do not violate the borders of Russian airspace. They themselves are very afraid of this. It’s only on TV and at all sorts of international forums that Americans don’t have to recognize Crimea as Russian territory, but in reality they have to admit it. Not a single such device will risk crossing the air border of our Crimean peninsula even by a centimeter,” the expert emphasized.
He added that Iran has demonstrated perfectly how to shoot down such a device, which costs about $200 million.
“There is a naval version of the Global Hawk called Triton. This is exactly the same device, simply specializing in reconnaissance of naval targets. And last year Iran took it and shot it down in the Persian Gulf. The Americans lost their nerve. They only said: actually, it’s not good, we didn’t violate any boundaries. And Iran replied: no, according to our data, they violated it.
Then I looked at his flight route - there is a resource that allows you to track transponders (and he, by the way, flew with the transponder turned on) - and it shows that the Global Hawk actually did not cross the borders of Iran. Well, Iran decided in its own way: it took it and shot it down,” said Murakhovsky.
As PolitNavigator reported, the commander of the Ukrainian Navy is threatening the Russian Black Sea Fleet with Turkish drones.
The American military has long recognized Crimea as Russian.