Zagreb, Croatia (AP) —Croatian officials are slow to respond to military drones that appear to have flown from the Ukrainian war zone across several NATO member states before the crash in the NATO urban area on Saturday. Criticized. Croatian capital.
A Russian-made unmanned aerial vehicle crossed Romania and Hungary before entering Croatia and crashed into a field near the dormitory late Thursday. About 40 parked cars were damaged, but no one was injured in the big explosion.
NATO said the alliance’s integrated aviation and missile defense tracked the flight path of the object. However, the Croatian Prime Minister said state officials were not informed and NATO responded only after questions were raised by journalists.
“We can’t tolerate this situation, and it couldn’t have happened,” Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said when he visited the crash site.
“This is a pure and obvious threat and both NATO and the EU should have responded,” he said. “
Plenkovich said the Soviet-era Tu-141 “Strizh” reconnaissance drone crashed after flying over Hungary for more than 40 minutes and over Croatia for 6-7 minutes. Earlier, Romanian defense officials said flying objects were in Romanian airspace for only three minutes after they crossed from Ukraine and were difficult to intercept.
Plenkovich urged Hungarian authorities to begin investigating why both Croatia and Romania had little time to react to fast-moving objects and their defenses were clearly unaware of unmanned drones.
“Fortunately, nothing worse happened,” said Plenkovich, adding that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban “knows about this after me.”
“This may have fallen to a nuclear power plant in Hungary. Obviously there was no good reaction and other countries did not react well. Now we have to learn and react better to the test I have, “he said.
He said that only mid-air collision investigations could identify who fired the drone (Russian or Ukrainian) after the object was pulled from a large crater created after the collision.
Both Russia and Ukraine have denied firing drones.
According to military experts, Ukraine is the only known current operator of the Tu-141, with a wingspan of about 4 meters (12 feet) and a weight of just over 6 tons.