i m victor blackwell. and i m bianna golodryga. in moments the nation s top defense officials are expected to take reporters questions, this after the pentagon says russia downed an american drone over the black sea. a high-level russian official said russia will try to retrieve the wreckage, while white house officials say finding the debris may be impossible. the u.s. military said on tuesday a russian jet dumped fuel on the unmanned u.s. aircraft which it says was doing routine operations in international air space. the russian jet then hit the propeller of the reaper, forcing its remote pilots to bring it down in international waters. the pentagon says the move was part of a russian pattern of aggression, but the kremlin gives a different version of events and declared today that u.s. and russia relations are at their lowest point and in a deplorable state. cnn s oren liebermann is standing by at the pentagon waiting for the press conference to begin. you have new de
to the initial meetings of the ukraine defense contact group, but they continue to come back and they continue to work hard to ensure that ukraine gets everything that it needs to be successful. and that will remain our focus going forward. so, dan, on the recovery piece, we know we are landed in the back sea, probably 4,000, 5,000 feet of water, any recovery option is difficult at that depth by anyone. that s first point. secondly is true we don t have any ships there but we do have a lot of allies and friends in the area. we will work through recovery operations, that s u.s. property and we will leave it at that at this point. but it probably broke up, probably not a lot to recover, frankly. as far as the loss of anything of sensitive intelligence, et cetera, as normal we would take and we did take mitigating measures. so we are quite confidence that whatever whatever was of value is no longer of value. next question will go to elie