American Global Hawk UAV Was Overhead During Ukrainian Sea Drones' Attack on Russian Warship

An American-operated RQ-4B Global Hawk drone was overhead when Ukrainian unmanned explosive-laden boats attempted to attack a Russian reconnaissance vessel Priazovye that was monitoring activity around a Russia-Turkey gas pipeline.

“The Armed Forces of Ukraine unsuccessfully attempted to attack the Black Sea Fleet's ship Priazovye, which is carrying out control and security tasks along the routes of the Turkish Stream and the Blue Stream gas pipelines in the southeastern part of the Black Sea, with six unmanned speedboats,” Russian defense ministry said.

A statement from the Russian MoD said the attack was repelled and that no harm was caused to the warship.

“In the course of repulsing the attack, all the boats were destroyed by Russian ship's regular weapons 300km southeast of Sevastopol. There were no casualties. The ship was not damaged,” the ministry added.

The mention of the presence of the Global Hawk seems to insinuate that the U.S. drone may have some role to play in the unmanned Ukrainian boats attack.

Last week, a similar incident occurred when another Russian reconnaissance vessel was attacked by three Ukrainian unmanned boats.