The Croatian Prime Minister, Andrej Plenkovic, deplored this Saturday the lack of reaction in NATO airspace, after the fall in Zagreb of a military drone launched “on the territory of Ukraine”, and called to “strengthening cooperation” within the alliance.
“It is obvious that the reaction was not good, neither the estimation of the level of danger, nor the communication with other countries in a prompt and rapid manner (…) This is an incident which should not not repeat itself,” Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said while visiting the scene of the drone crash. “It’s a test that should allow us all to learn a lot and react much better,” he added.
Soviet-made reconnaissance drone
The machine crashed Thursday evening in a park located six kilometers from the center of Zagreb, next to a university city housing 4,500 students and some 200 meters from a residential area, without causing any casualties. Forty cars parked in a parking lot were damaged.
According to the Croatian leader, it is a Tupolev Tu-141 Strizh, a Soviet-made reconnaissance drone used in the 1970s and 1980s. 14 meters long, this machine weighs more than 6 tons. “Obviously launched on the territory of Ukraine”, the machine flew in the airspace of Romania and Hungary, before crashing in Zagreb, after “seven minutes” of flight in Croatia, according to Andrej Plenkovic. “We don’t know who it belonged to (…) the Russian and Ukrainian parties claiming that it is not theirs,” he explained, adding that elements that will be discovered during the investigation may allow to have this answer.
No alert in Croatia
Zagreb is some 550 kilometers as the crow flies from the nearest border with Ukraine, which has been facing an invasion by Russian forces since February 24. The Prime Minister called for “strengthening and intensifying cooperation” in such situations within the alliance. According to Croatian authorities, the craft was in Hungarian airspace for about 40 minutes, without Croatia being alerted.
“This is NATO, Romanian, Hungarian and Croatian airspace, and we can no longer tolerate such a situation. It shouldn’t happen again. It was an obvious threat that we should have reacted to,” said Andrej Plenkovic. A NATO official told AFP on Friday that “integrated air and missile defense [de l’alliance] followed the trajectory of an object which then crashed in Zagreb”.