An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) washed ashore on the Black Sea coast and was assessed to have likely been Russian, Turkey’s defence ministry has said. The UAV was found on Tuesday (February 10) on a beach in Ünye, a district of Ordu, a province on Turkey’s northern coast about 450 miles east of Istanbul and 195 miles from the Russian border, the ministry spokesperson said in a weekly briefing.
A team from the Underwater Defense Group Command (SAS) was sent to the area on Wednesday. The UAV did not contain explosives, according to the ministry, and was handed over to the Ünye Police Department for examination. The ministry did not publicly identify the UAV model or say how it reached Turkey’s coast. In its statement on Thursday, it said it was “assessed” as Russian.
The shortest distance between Ünye and the Russian border, across the Black Sea, as the crow flies, is approximately 195 miles.
This is not the first case of UAVs falling in Turkey, fuelling mounting security fears amid Russia‘s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and the risk of spillover into NATO countries. Turkey holds the strategic keys to the Black Sea, controlling access to the Mediterranean via the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits.
On December 19, a Russian Orlan-10 reconnaissance drone was discovered in the Kocaeli province near the city of Izmit. Four days earlier, the Turkish Ministry of Defence said its fighter jets had shot down an « out-of-control » drone flying from the Black Sea.
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« Our F-16 fighter jets under NATO and national command were scrambled to ensure airspace security. It was determined that the air trail belonged to an unmanned aerial vehicle that had gone out of control; in order to avoid negative consequences, it was shot down in a safe area outside populated areas. »
In the wake of the incident, Ankara urged both Russia and Ukraine to exercise restraint to safeguard Black Sea security, as investigators sought to determine where the drone had come from.
More recently, on February 5, fishermen reported spotting an object believed to be a UAV in waters off Istanbul’s Black Sea coast near Karaburun. Coast guard teams were deployed to the scene, and examinations are ongoing. Officials have yet to formally identify the object.
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