Russian fighter pilots involved in an incident with a U.S. drone that resulted in its crash will be given state awards, the Defense Ministry announced Friday. The move appears to signal Moscow's intention to adopt a more aggressive stance toward future U.S. surveillance flights.
Russian crews are scouring the Black Sea for remnants of the American MQ-9 Reaper that crashed there earlier this week, Pentagon officials said, while the U.S. military made public on Thursday raw video footage that seems to show a Russian fighter jet dumping fuel on the drone and clipping its propeller just before it went down.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov talked briefly Thursday at a meeting of top diplomats from the Group of 20 nations in the first high-level meeting in months between the two countries.
Russia is mulling sending fighter jets to Iran as part of an expanding military alliance that has seen Tehran ship artillery and tank rounds to Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, the White House said Friday.