An plane without a pilot crashed at dawn near the Croatian capital on Friday. The Soviet-made device came from the war zone of Ukraine via Romania and Hungary.
According to local press reports, a loud explosion could be heard in the area, but no one was injured and no material damage occurred. According to a statement from the Croatian National Security Council, the military drone entered Croatian airspace at a speed of about 700 kilometers per hour from Hungary at an altitude of 1,300 meters. Earlier, the Zagreb government reported that the plane had spent more than forty minutes in Hungarian airspace and then less than seven minutes over Croatia. This means that the device has flown at least 560 kilometers without being identified by Hungarian or Croatian air defense. Both countries are members of NATO. “According to our current information, this is a Russian-made aircraft, but it is not known whether it belonged to the Russian or Ukrainian armies,” the Croatian prime minister said.
Andrej Plenković announced that his Hungarian colleague Viktor Orbán had informed him that the military drone had entered the airspace of Hungary from Romania. Croatian President Zoran Milanović has stated that the incident is being treated as a serious case and an investigation has been launched to investigate the circumstances. Analysts at The War Zone online magazine say it may have been a Soviet operational-tactical reconnaissance robot TU-141 with malfunctions. As it was written, according to available data, currently in the world alone Ukraine is in the control of such machines. However, Markyan Lubkivsky, an adviser to the Ukrainian defense minister, said in an interview with the news portal Jutarnji.hr that the drone did not belong to his country’s forces.
szabadeuropa.hu
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