The drone found in Greece is Ukrainian, the government in Athens announces: “An extremely serious problem”
The Greek defense minister said on Tuesday that the military maritime drone that was found in the area of the island of Lefkada was of Ukrainian manufacture. The official described the incident as an “extremely serious problem” given the potential threat it posed to shipping in the Mediterranean Sea, according to the Associated Press, cited by ABC News.
A fisherman on the island of Lefkada found the drone in a coastal cave last Thursday, May 7, and towed it to a nearby port. It was moved a day later to a naval base on the mainland for inspection, and the explosives it carried were later destroyed, according to Greece's public broadcaster ERT.
“We now have certainty that it is a Ukrainian USV (unmanned surface vehicle, nr),” Minister Nikos Dendias said.
Dendias, who made the statement on the sidelines of a meeting in Brussels with other EU defense ministers, said he would address the topic in discussion with his counterparts.
“You understand that the presence of that USV — the drone, the maritime drone — affects the freedom of navigation and also affects the security of navigation,” the Greek minister said. “This is an extremely serious problem,” he added.
Ukrainian forces have used surface drones to attack Russian ships in the Black Sea, and more recently to target oil tankers used in Russian oil shipments.
“It was moving in an uncontrolled manner”
Lefkada, an island off the west coast of mainland Greece, lies on a busy waterway to Italy and is popular both as a tourist destination and for commercial ships.
“It appears that (the drone) suffered a malfunction and was moving in an uncontrolled manner,” Stefanos Gikas, Greece's deputy minister for maritime affairs, said on public television on Monday, describing it as “a black object with no navigation and carrying explosives.” “It could have hit a tourist boat,” he warned.
