Pentagon declassified video footage of Russia’s interception of a U.S. surveillance drone that crashed into the Black Sea on Tuesday clearly shows that Russia “blatantly lied” about the incident, a White House National Security Council official said. John Kirby is quoted by CNN. .

• The crash site of the American drone intercepted by Russian aircraft over the Black Sea – the US Army released a MAP

“(The video) clearly demonstrated our version of what happened,” John Kirby said.

“The Russians simply lied”

He said the decision to release the footage was also made to “expose and make clear to the rest of the world how the Russians simply lied” about the incident and the video provided “clear and convincing evidence”.

However, the US official also says that the images cannot be evidence of the Russian pilot’s intentions: “We don’t know if it was intentional, the video doesn’t show that,” he added.

American officials and their Russian counterparts are openly at odds over the causes of the Black Sea incident.

The first images of the interception of an American drone by Russian aircraft

On Thursday, the US military released images of Russian jets that intercepted a Reaper drone over the Black Sea two days ago, causing the plane to crash.

The roughly 40-second video, declassified by the Pentagon, was edited by the US military for length, but shows events in chronological order, the Pentagon said.

The footage shows a Sukhoi 27 jet approaching and passing the MQ-9 drone, leaving two jets of fuel.

Then the same plane or a pair of them perform the same maneuver and come even closer to the US surveillance drone, after which the image transmission is interrupted, possibly due to physical contact between the planes.

The final footage shows one of the propeller blades bent, suggesting that the Americans were right when they said there was contact between the Su-27 and the Reaper, and the Russians lied when they said their aircraft did not touch the drone.

Russia says drone crashed after ‘sudden maneuver’

It will be recalled that a Russian fighter jet caused the crash of a US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Black Sea on Tuesday. The Reaper drone and two SU-27 Flanker aircraft operated over international waters over the Black Sea.

The US European Command said two Russian Su-27 fighter jets conducted an “unsafe and unprofessional interception” of a US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone operating in international airspace over the Black Sea.

• “Around 07:03, one of the Russian Su-27 aircraft hit the MQ-9’s propeller, resulting in the downing of the MQ-9 by US forces in international waters.
• “Several times before the collision, the Su-27 jettisoned fuel and flew in front of the MQ-9 in a careless and unprofessional manner,” the source said.

Russia has rejected U.S. accusations that its planes acted recklessly in Tuesday’s incident over the Black Sea and said the drone was flying near Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, on its way to territory claimed by Russia. Russia also claimed that the drone made a “sudden maneuver” that caused it to crash, insisting that there was no contact between the aircraft and the drone.