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Turkey shot down an “out of control” drone that approached its airspace from the Black Sea, according to the defence ministry.
F-16 fighter planes were scrambled after the drone was detected, the Turkish defence ministry said in a statement late on Monday.
“To avoid any potential harm, it was shot down in a safe area outside of populated area,” it said. The statement gave no further details of the location or time of the incident.
The incident followed Ukrainian attacks on Russian “shadow fleet” in the Black Sea and warnings from Turkish lawmakers about the risk of Moscow’s war in Ukraine spreading.
Last week, Russian forces attacked Chornomorsk and Odesa ports in Ukraine’s southwestern Odesa region and damaged three Turkish-owned cargo vessels.
That came after Kyiv’s naval drones hit two Russian shadow fleet tankers in the Black Sea — inside Turkey’s exclusive economic zone — on 28 November. On 11 December, Ukraine claimed another strike on a shadow fleet vessel off Crimea’s coast.
Following those drone strikes, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened that Moscow could “cut Ukraine off from the sea”.
Russia’s shadow fleet consists of old tankers — often registered under flags of convenience in countries like Comoros or Panama — used to circumvent Western sanctions by transporting Russian oil with transponders switched off to avoid detection.
Over the past few years, Kyiv has managed to push Russia’s Black Sea fleet off annexed Crimea and away from coastal zones Moscow used to control.
Turkey, which has the longest Black Sea coastline at approximately 1,330 kilometres, has grown ever more concerned about the attacks off its coast.
Last month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Ukraine’s strikes on the Russian shadow fleet tankers represented a “worrying escalation” of the conflict.
“We cannot condone these attacks, which threaten navigational safety, life, and the environment, especially in our own exclusive zone,” Erdoğan said in a televised address.
NATO member Turkey has kept close ties with Russia and Ukraine during the nearly four-year war. It hosted low-level talks between Ukraine and Russia earlier this year, yet the only significant progress in Istanbul was on exchanging prisoners of war.
Additional sources • AP