Pentagon rejects Russian airspace claims after downing of U.S. drone

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday that the U.S. military would “continue to fly and operate wherever international law allows,” rejecting Moscow’s claim of a self-declared exclusion zone over extended parts of the Black Sea the day after a U.S. drone was downed following an encounter there with Russian warplanes.

The Kremlin said it would try to retrieve the wreckage of the surveillance drone, which the Biden administration said was crashed in international waters by its operators after a “reckless” Russian pilot, perhaps unintentionally, caused a collision and rendered it unflyable. Russia denied the assertion and said the drone’s presence in the area a day earlier proved that the U.S. military was “directly participating” in the Ukraine war.