WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY from Jeff Childers
'The Wall Street Journal ran a surprisingly optimistic story yesterday headlined, “Russian Jet Collides With U.S. Drone Over Black Sea.” While the article doesn’t say this explicitly, it reveals that the people in charge of the Proxy War on both sides are working hard to avoid a catastrophic result.

It’s hard to say which, the DOD or the Russians, is likely being more honest. I’m sure you remember the detailed and reliable information that the DOD recently provided about the Chinese war balloons, a problem which apparently has completely resolved with any further information from military officials being necessary, don’t trouble your pretty little head about it.
Anyway, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday the DOD’s version that, after the Russians discovered a peaceful, $15M unmanned MQ-9 “Reaper” surveillance drone was minding its own business and not hurting anybody running general maneuvers somewhere over international waters in the Black Sea, a Russian fighter jet did a flyby and dumped fuel on the drone, then a second fighter attempted the same maneuver but couldn’t pull it off and accidentally collided with the drone, forcing the Reaper’s operators to land the aircraft in the Black Sea. For everyone’s safety.
The DOD said won’t recover the multi-million-dollar high-tech drone — why would it? — and for that matter doesn’t even know exactly where it is. And that is all the DOD is going to say about that. In a statement, the DOD’s European Command criticized the Russians — I am not making this up — for POOR ENVIRONMENTALISM and being “unprofessional”:

“Several times before the collision, the Su-27s dumped fuel on and flew in front of the MQ-9 [Reaper] in a reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner,” the military’s European Command said in a statement. “This incident demonstrates a lack of competence in addition to being unsafe and unprofessional.”

Those two charges are obviously ridiculous, which highlights the ABSENCE of escalatory rhetoric. The DOD is clearly attributing the collision to an accident and NOT Russian aggression.
As you can see from the map below, the Reaper drone — which is also called a “hunter-killer” and carries FIFTEEN TIMES as much ordnance than the prior model — splashed down near the southern tip of Crimea — i.e., Russian territory. The DOD said it was just minding its own business and conducting a “routine mission in international waters.”
Now let’s hear the Russian version of events.

In its own statement, the Russian Ministry of Defense says that a U.S. drone flight was detected in Russia’s Crimean region, heading in the direction of the Russian border. The drone’s transponders were turned off, violating airspace rules and posing a danger to aircraft in the area. Russian fighter jets scrambled in response.
The Russians say its fighters did not use their WEAPONS — which is consistent with fuel dumping — and deny contacting the US drone. The Russians say that as a result of “sharp maneuvering,” the U.S. drone went into “uncontrolled flight with a loss of altitude” and “collided with the water surface.”

Other unverifiable online sources claim that the Russians have recovered the multi-million dollar unmanned aircraft, which features some of the U.S.’s top tech. Neither side officially commented on where the drone is now; in other words, neither side denied the Russians have the drone.
Furthermore, both sides claimed the collision was accidental — nobody’s fault — and merely blamed the accident on each other’s bad flying. So, while the hot takes are screaming about nearly starting a hot war, to me it looks more like cooler heads on both sides rapidly de-escalated any potential conflict. That’s the best news I’ve seen from the Proxy War in months.'