American drones over the Black Sea increase the "risk of direct conflict" between Russia and NATO, the Russian Ministry of Defense warned today.
"These flights 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 Russia," the statement said.
"The responsibility for that would lie with the NATO countries," the Russian Ministry of Defense points out.
It added that US drones are used for "reconnaissance and targeting for precision weapons supplied by the West to the Ukrainian armed forces."
The Kremlin claims that long-range ATACMS missile attacks cannot be carried out by Ukraine alone, without the necessary experts, technology and intelligence collected by the Americans.
On June 24, Russia threatened the US with retaliation, accusing it of "killing Russian children", a day after Ukraine's strike on Crimea, a peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.
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