Shoigu thinks that after such words there are “fewer and fewer” steps to the dangerous line. “It prompts us to think seriously about what happens next, with which we can react,” the minister said in an interview for the program “Moscow. Kremlin. Putin” on the Rossiya 1 TV channel. Journalist Pavel Zarubin posted an excerpt yesterday on his Telegram channel.
Shoigu recalled that NATO countries had already used such ammunition during the events in Kosovo and Serbia, “when they massively, without any sanction, without any authorization, bombed peaceful cities, destroyed bridges”.
In the meantime, yesterday and the day before yesterday, there were events that were geographically distant from the special operations area, but which, like the incident of the American MQ-9 drone, were linked to it.
Specifically, they are related to statements from Washington that after the loss of a drone (note that he collected information about Russian troops in Crimea), American planes will continue to fly in areas of the world of interest the country. On March 20, the Baltic Sea turned out to be such an area.
On that day, the National Defense Control Center of the Russian Federation reported: “On March 20, the radar installations of the air defense forces of the Western Military District operating over the Baltic Sea detected two air targets flying towards the border state of the Russian Federation. The targets were classified as two US Air Force B-52N strategic bombers.
In order to identify and prevent violation of the state border of the Russian Federation, a Su-35 fighter of the air defense forces of the Western Military District was taken into the air, the crew of which occupied the area of service established in the air.
After the withdrawal of foreign military aircraft from the border of the Russian Federation, the Russian fighter returned to its base airfield.
The message emphasized that our fighter was flying in strict accordance with international rules for the use of airspace.
In the UK, they announced the supply of depleted uranium shells to Kiev and increased the effectiveness of the destruction of armored vehicles
The Russian Defense Ministry used the same wording yesterday in a report on a planned flight of a pair of Tu-95MS strategic missile carriers over neutral waters in the Sea of Japan. According to the agency, the planes spent more than 7 hours in the sky. Along the way, they were accompanied by Su-30SM and Su-35S fighters of the Air Force and the Eastern Military District Air Defense Forces.
It can be assumed that, given a number of special circumstances, in particular the special attention of the United States to this region and the fact that the flight of our “strategists” over the Sea of Japan coincided with the state visit of the President of the PRC to Russia, the news of the appearance of Tu -95MS did not please the United States and its allies.
And the Russian Ministry of Defense added an important explanation to its message: “Pilots of long-range aviation regularly fly over neutral waters in the Arctic, North Atlantic, Black and Baltic Seas and of the Pacific Ocean”.
By analyzing these two events, you come to an unambiguous conclusion. If the United States has not learned the lessons of the MQ-9 incident and continues to escalate the situation in the regions bordering Russia, Moscow will not look on these provocations indifferently. There will always be an appropriate and harsh response to them.
The same goes for the Ukrainian drone attack on civilian facilities in Djankoy on Tuesday evening. The drones were shot down by our air defense. But their debris, filled with explosives and shrapnel, injured a 33-year-old resident and damaged several buildings and power grid facilities. “The Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case”, – said the head of Crimea Sergei Aksyonov.
The official representative of the Russian Defense Ministry, Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov, also spoke about the events in the NMD zone yesterday. The Ukrainian armed forces lost more than 400 people a day, dozens of pieces of equipment, including the American-made M777 artillery system.
