Poland Says It Is Sending 4 Fighter Jets to Ukraine Within Days

But on Wednesday, a three-person commission of inquiry created by the United Nations Human Rights Council last year said in a report that Russian missile attacks on energy infrastructure since October — leaving millions of people without power, heat or water — could also amount to crimes against humanity.

And Russian forces’ use of torture against civilians and prisoners of war in occupied areas may also amount to crimes against humanity, on the ground that their use was systematic, occurred in several different regions of Ukraine in sites intended for that purpose and showed a degree of planning, the panel said.

The 18-page report echoed many of the findings in the panel’s preliminary assessment last September, but was able to go into greater detail on patterns of abuse. The report drew on findings made during eight trips to Ukraine, visits to 56 towns and communities and interviews with 595 people, as well as on satellite data.

The commissioners said their attempts to establish “meaningful communication” with the Russian authorities had no success, although they noted that a Russian government department had referred some material to them.

Their findings and a list of individuals linked to abuses will provide additional ammunition to intensive Ukrainian and international investigations aimed at holding Russia to account for its actions after invading Ukraine just over a year ago.

Among the abuses the report enumerated was the use of torture, which the commission said was “prevalent” against certain categories of people, particularly serving or former members of Ukraine’s armed forces, as well as local officials, employees of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and civilians with pro-Ukraine views.

A common Russian torture technique, known as a “call to Putin” or “call to Lenin,” used military phones connected to electrical cables to deliver shocks to feet, fingers and genitals. Other methods of torture, the panel said, included rape, as well as hanging detainees from the ceiling with their hands tied, strangling them with cables and suffocating them with plastic bags or gas masks.

Some victims, they said, had witnessed fellow detainees being tortured to death. In other cases, the torture of prisoners was followed by their execution.

Russian troops who conducted house-to-house searches as they took control of areas also raped women at gunpoint, with “extreme brutality” and torture, the panel reported. The commission said it documented sexual violence against “women, men and girls aged from 4 to 82.”

The commissioners said Russia’s transfer of children and other civilians from Ukraine to Russia may amount to a war crime, observing that none of the cases they investigated were justified under international law. Ukraine has reported the transfer of 16,221 children to Russia, but the commission said it had not been able to verify the number.

Separately, large numbers of children were moved from areas occupied by Russian forces to so-called vacation camps in Crimea and inside Russia with parental consent, they noted, but Russia required parents to travel in person to collect them and many had been unable to do so, raising fears of permanent separation.

The commissioners said they had also documented “a small number of violations” committed by Ukrainian forces, which also included war crimes. These ranged from two cases of torture and indiscriminate attacks they believed were carried out by Ukrainian forces using widely shunned cluster munitions and “butterfly mines” in attacks on territory occupied by Russian troops.

“The initial challenge is finding it,” said Iain Butterworth, a lawyer and engineer with extensive experience in maritime salvage operations. “It may be broken up into a number of pieces. With currents, it could be over a significant area.”

The Ukrainian military reported unusual Russian naval activity in the Black Sea on Thursday, with ships deployed in a way suggesting that they were searching for the drone, which crashed on Tuesday after an incident involving two Russian jets.

A successful salvage could be used by Moscow for propaganda purposes, but Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said that Russia’s military would only raise the drone if necessary for security reasons.

The drone would most likely have a beacon, but it was unclear whether Russian vessels would be able to gain access to its signal, given that it was a U.S. military aircraft, Mr. Butterworth said. The Pentagon has said that the drone’s wreckage would be of limited military value.

The next challenge is the depth of the water. The Pentagon said that the drone crashed around 75 miles southwest of Ukraine’s Crimea region, which Russia annexed illegally in 2014. Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the drone went down in waters 4,000 to 5,000 feet deep.

That depth — the equivalent to approximately five Eiffel Towers standing end to end — is far beyond the range at which commercial divers can operate.

As a result, underwater robots, called Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicles, would have to be deployed. The devices, widely used in the offshore oil and gas industry, often have a claw that can be used to grab onto objects.

“They would probably send mini subs to locate the things, hook it and winch it up to the surface,” said Anthony Desbrousses, the director of Marine Recoveries, a marine liability insurance firm.

“You have to collect pieces, using different sling systems, with as little impact as possible,” he said. “You are going to winch something from more than a kilometer down, so there will be currents and waves.”

Any winch would need to be attached to a vessel and, to prevent it from moving in the water as the slow process unfolds, it would need to have a dynamic positioning system, which involves engines and satellites, to keep it stable, said Mr. Desbrousses, who has extensive involvement with marine salvage.

Such systems are also widely used in the offshore energy industry and a prerequisite to any rescue attempt would be assembling the right team of experts as well as an array of complex equipment. That would probably take weeks and the costs could rise to tens of millions of dollars, the experts said. Any salvage could also be delayed by bad weather.

Russia most likely has the expertise for this kind of operation, Mr. Butterworth said, though the fact that the operation would take place in what is effectively an active military zone would make it more difficult.

Moscow also had prior experience of high-profile underwater salvage operations in difficult conditions, though not all had been successful. No survivors were found aboard the Kursk, a Russian Navy submarine that sank in around 360 feet of water in the Barents Sea in 2000. The submarine was eventually salvaged.

He said that President Andrzej Duda of Poland had not spoken to President Biden about the MIGs he said he intended to transfer to Kyiv.

The Biden administration has resisted sending American fighter jets to Ukraine in part because it would take too long to train pilots for the military operations currently underway in Ukraine’s south and eastern territories. It could also prove a risky move, given Russia’s air superiority.

Mr. Kirby praised Poland for the weapons and other military support it had given Ukraine. Poland is one of the largest donors to the Ukrainian war effort when its support is measured against the size of its economy. “I’m not going to miss an opportunity to plug Poland, who is really punching above its weight when it comes to supporting Ukraine,” Mr. Kirby said.

A NATO spokesman declined to comment.

Poland first pledged such fighters a year ago, in the first weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion, but has so far sent none. Just a few days ago Poland said it would only send warplanes to Ukraine as part of a coalition with other countries.

It was not immediately clear on Thursday whether other countries with MIG jets were ready to join Poland or Poland was going it alone. The issue of providing Ukraine with warplanes has been a contentious one among the country’s allies, widely seen as a step too far that risked provoking Russia.

Mr. Duda made the announcement in Warsaw, after a meeting with the new president of the Czech Republic, Petr Pavel, a retired general and former chairman of NATO’s Military Committee. Mr. Duda said that the rapid delivery of the four MIGs to Ukraine would be followed “gradually” by more than a dozen others that Poland has in its stocks, once they had been repaired and prepared for combat.

He said that Poland’s Air Force would replace the jets with FA-50s from South Korea, the first of which are expected to be delivered later this year, and F-35s ordered from the United States.

Polish officials, including Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak, had previously said that their country was ready to send Ukraine its entire fleet of MIG-29s — thought to number around 28, but not all operational — but only “within the framework of a larger coalition” of countries that also use the planes. Mr. Duda made no mention of any such condition having been met on Thursday.

One European defense official familiar with Poland’s plans cautioned that it might still take some time for the MIG jets to be delivered, citing “some formalities” that needed to be completed first. The official said it was expected that Slovakia would also contribute MIG jets to Ukraine.

Poland — which shares a 330-mile border with Ukraine, has taken in more than 1.5 million war refugees and is the main transit route for Western arms flowing into Ukraine — has long lobbied its allies within NATO to send more and better weapons to help Ukrainian forces fight back against Russia. It pressured Germany into agreeing earlier this year to send advanced Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine, and sent a handful of its own Leopard tanks to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, last month during a visit there by the Polish prime minister.

But Poland has sometimes run ahead of itself in its eagerness to aid Ukraine.

It said last March that it was ready to send its fleet of MIG-29s to Ukraine, on condition that the United States replace them with more modern American-made jets.

The plan fell apart after Poland abruptly announced that, instead of sending the planes directly to Ukraine, it would send them to a U.S. air base in Ramstein, Germany, for transfer to Ukraine. Blindsided by a Polish plan it had not been consulted about, Washington dismissed the Ramstein idea as a nonstarter. None of the planes left Poland.

An effort to send MIG’s to Ukraine in collaboration with Slovakia, which also uses the Soviet-era warplanes, also stumbled, largely as a result of Slovak political ructions, which led to a successful no-confidence vote in December against the country’s strongly pro-Ukrainian government.

Slovakia’s prime minister, Eduard Heger, has said since that this country still wants to send its MIGs to Ukraine, but his opponents insist that no decision be made until after elections later this year.

Lara Jakes contributed reporting from Rome.

“They exhaust, bleed the enemy, knock out his combat power in terms of personnel and equipment,” Colonel Cherevatyi said.

Ukraine’s military is firing thousands of artillery shells a day and sustaining heavy casualties as it tries to hold Bakhmut. The bombardment has been so intense that the Pentagon raised concerns with Kyiv recently after several days of nonstop artillery firing, two U.S. officials said, highlighting the tension between Ukraine’s decision to defend Bakhmut at all costs and its hopes for retaking territory in the spring.

But Ukrainian military officials remained optimistic about Kyiv’s defense of the city. Colonel Cherevatyi said Wednesday that after months of fighting, Russia’s gains around Bakhmut “were obtained at such a high price that it is difficult to call it even a ‘Pyrrhic victory.’”

He said the battle remained extremely difficult but the Ukrainian soldiers fighting in Bakhmut were paving the way for future successes on the battlefield.

“They are draining Russian forces’ fighting strength and power, bleeding them, exhausting them, breaking their morale and thereby allowing their brothers-in-arms, who are currently training abroad, to forge new ‘iron brigades’ that will later kick the invader out of our territory,” he said in an appearance on national television.

The U.S. defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, speaking to reporters on Wednesday, said Russia had made “small, tactical gains” around the city but “at great cost.”

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said it believed the Russian effort to encircle and capture Bakhmut, which has been spearheaded by the Wagner private military group, was reaching the point of exhaustion.

“Manpower, artillery, and equipment losses in fights for Bakhmut will likely constrain Wagner’s ability to complete a close encirclement of Bakhmut or gain substantial territory in battles for urban areas,” the analysts reported Tuesday night.

A British report to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe said Wednesday that an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Russian troops and Wagner forces had been killed and wounded since May last year in the area around Bakhmut alone, in what it described as “a huge loss of human life for a total territorial advance of approximately just 25km.”

Ian Stubbs, a senior military adviser to the British delegation to the O.S.C.E. who delivered the statement, said on Wednesday that it “is getting more and more difficult” for Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner group, to “resupply” fighters for the battle for Bakhmut.

In an interview aired on Thursday, Mr. Prigozhin reiterated accusations he has made against Russia’s military leaders, saying they were starving Wagner forces of ammunition to deny them a victory in Bakhmut.

Mariusz Kaminski, the Polish interior minister, announced the dismantling of what he said was a major Russia espionage network a day after a visit to Warsaw, Poland’s capital, by the C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, who has played a key role in coordinating the delivery of Western-supplied arms to Ukraine by train and road from Poland.

“The suspects conducted intelligence activities against Poland and prepared acts of sabotage at the request of Russian intelligence,” Mr. Kaminski told journalists in Warsaw. The planned sabotage, he said, was “aimed at paralyzing the supply of equipment, weapons and aid to Ukraine.”

Poland, a stalwart ally of the United States and one of Europe’s most robust supporters of Ukraine, is the main transit route for weapons and ammunition provided by the United States and other countries to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s military onslaught.

Neither Poland nor the United States gave any details of the C.I.A. director’s talks Wednesday with the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, and Jacek Siewiera, the head of Poland’s National Security Bureau. A brief statement issued by the Polish presidency said only that they had discussed “the general security situation in the context of recent events.”

Accusing Western nations of “pumping up” Ukraine with weapons, Russia last year declared arms convoys “a legitimate military target,” but so far has refrained from striking railway lines or roads into Ukraine from eastern Poland, whose territory is covered by the NATO alliance’s commitment to collective security.

During the Soviet war in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, the K.G.B. and the G.R.U., the Soviet military’s intelligence agency, organized regular sabotage missions inside Pakistan to try to prevent weapons from the United States, China and other countries from crossing into Afghanistan. Soviet and Afghan government warplanes also bombed Pakistan’s border region, a haven for mujahedeen fighters backed and armed by the United States.

Bombastic commentators on Russian state television have often called for strikes inside Poland’s border with Ukraine, but their threats are generally dismissed as part of a Russian campaign to scare off Western support for Ukraine.

Mr. Kaminski, who oversees Poland’s security services, said six of the nine had been detained in an initial round of arrests by Poland’s Internal Security Agency, or A.B.W., and had been formally charged with espionage. The three others, arrested on Wednesday, were still awaiting formal charges, he said.

He said that none of the people arrested were Polish, and that all of them had come “from across the eastern border.” He did not specify their nationalities. Poland borders Ukraine and Russia’s client state Belarus in the east and the Russia territory of Kaliningrad in the north.

They had been monitoring railway lines with cameras and other equipment and carrying out other hostile tasks in return for regular payment from Russia’s intelligence services, he said. The A.B.W., Mr. Kaminski said, had found cameras, electronic equipment and GPS transmitters intended for mounting on weapons transports to Ukraine.

A Polish radio station, RMF-FM, reported earlier that cameras had been found near an airport in the eastern city of Rzeszow, a major logistical hub for military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. The cameras, the radio station said, recorded movements on railway tracks near the airport and transmitted images.

Mr. Kaminski said the people had also received orders from Russia “to carry out propaganda activities in order to destabilize Polish-Ukrainian relations, incite and arouse hostile sentiments toward NATO countries in Poland, and to attack the Polish government’s policy toward Ukraine.”

Poland, though bitterly polarized between supporters and opponents of the governing Law and Justice party, has mostly united behind Ukraine. But some far-right groups, angling for support ahead of national elections later this year, have sought, so far with little success, to stir public hostility to Ukrainian refugees, more than 1.5 million of whom are now living in Poland, and have demanded an end to military aid.

Anti-Ukrainian sentiment was once strong among many Polish nationalists, angry that Ukraine has never fully acknowledged or apologized for the massacre of Poles by Ukrainian nationalists before and during World War II in territory that was formerly part of Poland.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last February, however, hostility to Ukraine on the right has largely faded, replaced by much stronger and deeper hostility toward Russia, which has repeatedly attacked Poland in the past.

“They are trying to demonstrate their presence as much as possible in the Black Sea,” Ms. Humeniuk said.

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told reporters on Thursday that Russia’s military would raise the downed American reconnaissance drone from the bottom of the Black Sea if it deemed it necessary for security reasons.

“This is the prerogative of the military,” Mr. Peskov said. “If they consider it necessary for our interests and our security to do it in the Black Sea, they will do it.”

Russia said on Wednesday that it would try to recover the wreckage of the American spy drone, while U.S. officials said they were also looking for the aircraft but were unsure whether it could be recovered.

Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday that the drone sank into water 4,000 to 5,000 feet deep, making its recovery difficult. He said that Defense Department officials had not decided whether they will try to recover the debris. The United States Navy currently has no ships in the Black Sea.

“There’s probably not a lot to recover, frankly,” General Milley said. “As far as the loss of anything of sensitive intelligence, et cetera, as normal, we would take and we did take mitigating measures, so we’re quite confident that whatever was of value is no longer of value.”

A Defense Department official said the Pentagon remotely “wiped” sensitive intelligence from the drone. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

James C. McKinley Jr. contributed reporting.

On a final pass, one of the Russian jets collides with the drone, the Pentagon says, and the camera feed is lost for about 60 seconds. The footage released by the Pentagon does not show the collision. The video then resumes, showing the aircraft’s damaged propeller, which the Pentagon said was struck by the Russian jet.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on Wednesday accused Russia of “dangerous and reckless and unprofessional behavior” in blaming Moscow for the downing of the drone. Russia has denied any wrongdoing and initially blamed the crash on faulty maneuvering by the American drone operators.

Pentagon officials said on Thursday that the video clip provided visual evidence to support the American version of the episode, the first known physical contact between the Russian and American militaries since the war in Ukraine started last year.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has heightened tensions between Moscow and Washington, and turned the Black Sea into an effective battle zone. Russia has blockaded Ukrainian vessels within their own ports, though Ukraine has been able to export its grain across the sea under a deal signed last July between the two warring countries.

The release of the video clip comes a day after Mr. Austin had a rare phone call with his Russian counterpart in the aftermath of a collision in what senior Pentagon leaders said was an effort to move quickly to prevent the episode from worsening relations between the two superpowers.

Mr. Austin said he called Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, on Wednesday to clear the air. He declined to say whether Mr. Shoigu repeated his country’s denials that a Russian warplane swiped the American MQ-9 Reaper, causing it to crash into the Black Sea, but he said that just having a conversation was important given the events.

Mr. Shoigu countered that the incident was caused by U.S. noncompliance with a flight restriction zone declared by Russia, the Russian Ministry of Defense said in a statement. It called U.S. drone flights off the coast of Crimea “provocative in nature.”

Russia initially denied that its warplanes were to blame, saying in a statement on Tuesday that after the Russian Air Force scrambled fighter jets to identify the drone, the unmanned U.S. aircraft maneuvered sharply, lost altitude and hit the water.

The United States and Ukraine say the unarmed American drone was flying in international airspace on a routine surveillance and reconnaissance mission. American and Ukrainian officials have said they share intelligence gathered by such missions, particularly related to the threat posed by Russian warships and submarines in the Black Sea.

The video clip released on Thursday captures just a slice of what Pentagon officials say happened in the roughly 40 minutes leading up to the collision. During that time, while the drone was flying at about 25,000 feet, two Russian Su-27 fighter jets made 19 high-speed passes near the Reaper, dumping jet fuel on it during the last three or four, a senior U.S. military official said on Wednesday.

The collision happened on the last pass, as one of the Russian planes approached the drone at a high speed from behind. As the jet pulled up sharply, it collided with the MQ-9’s rear propeller, the official said.

The damaged Reaper drone limped along before its controllers brought down the $32 million aircraft in the sea about 75 miles southwest of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, which Russia has used as a base for launching devastating strikes.

Both Mr. Erdogan and Finland’s president, Sauli Niinisto, suggested this week that a declaration was coming soon, with the two leaders set to meet Friday.

“It was known that once President Erdogan has for his part made the decision concerning the ratification of Finland’s NATO membership, he would wish to meet and fulfill his promise directly from president to president,” Mr. Niinisto said in a statement on Wednesday.

Mr. Erdogan on Wednesday dropped his own hints about a potential announcement. When reporters asked whether the Turkish Parliament was prepared to ratify Finland’s membership after Friday’s meeting, he replied, “God willing, if it is for the best,” according to The Associated Press, adding that Turkey would “keep our promise.”

The comments have strengthened signs that Finland could wind up joining NATO without Sweden, a possibility that the Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, acknowledged at a news conference on Tuesday was increasingly likely.

Sweden’s bid has been particularly tied up by Ankara’s objections that the country needs to take a tougher tack against Kurdish separatists it considers terrorists. Turkey also wants some Kurds extradited from Sweden to face terrorism-related charges.

Finland, which has the longest border with Russia of any European Union nation, will continue to support Sweden’s efforts to join NATO, Mr. Niinisto said on Wednesday.

Whether or not Mr. Erdogan announces Turkey’s approval on Friday, Finland’s bid still requires ratification from Hungary, which has slow-walked the issue. A parliamentary session scheduled for next week was expected to include a vote on both Finland and Sweden’s bids, but it appears likely to be postponed again, The A.P. said this week.

Hungary has used its veto power within the European Union over sanctions against Russia to try to secure concessions on other issues, and now appears to be doing the same thing over Finland and Sweden joining NATO.

Johanna Lemola contributed reporting.

It filed its bid for membership in May, along with its neighbor Sweden, a few months after the invasion.

Here is what to know about Finland’s and Sweden’s bids to join NATO, a 30-nation alliance:

• Security concerns pushed Sweden and Finland to seek membership. Finland and Sweden jointly submitted their applications in May, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. If accepted, they would have protection under the alliance’s mutual defense agreement.

• Finland and Sweden have not been in any alliance before. While they held strategic partnerships, they abandoned decades of nonalignment to apply to join NATO.

• Turkey’s president has objected to Sweden’s bid. Although both Sweden and Finland have strong backing from most member states, the alliance requires unanimous consent to approve new members. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has indicated he is willing to ratify Finland’s membership (after much negotiation) but has demanded that Sweden crack down on Kurdish refugee groups — whose members he considers to be terrorists — and extradite a number of Kurds living in Sweden, some of whom are political refugees. He is holding out even though Sweden has promised to take a harder line.

• Finland might join NATO without Sweden. Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, has raised the possibility that the countries’ applications might be considered separately. In March, Finland’s Parliament passed all of the legislation it needs to join the alliance once it is approved by member states.

“I don’t know if we will be able to get it or not, but we need to do it, and we will definitely work on it,” Mr. Patrushev said. “I hope, of course, for success.”

The drone’s American operators ditched it in the Black Sea after a confrontation with two Russian fighter jets on Tuesday morning that lasted more than a half-hour. The Russian warplanes flew near the drone and dumped fuel on it before one of them clipped its propeller, making it impossible to fly, the Pentagon said.

John F. Kirby, a spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, said on CNN that the United States was also looking for the aircraft, though it was unclear if it could be recovered.

Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon that the drone sank into water 4,000 to 5,000 feet deep, making its recovery difficult. He said that Defense Department officials have not decided whether they will try to recover the debris. The United States Navy currently has no ships in the Black Sea.

“There’s probably not a lot to recover, frankly,” General Milley said. “As far as the loss of anything of sensitive intelligence, et cetera, as normal, we would take and we did take mitigating measures, so we’re quite confident that whatever was of value is no longer of value.”

A Defense Department official said the Pentagon remotely “wiped” sensitive intelligence from the drone. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

A day earlier, both John F. Kirby, a National Security Council spokesman, and Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, called the actions of the Russian warplanes “unsafe and unprofessional.”

Western and Russian air forces fly in proximity to each other in many parts of the world — in Europe, near Alaska, in eastern Syria. Both sides routinely conduct “intercepts,” or flybys, to check out any aircraft near their nation’s airspace with potential hostile intent or other problems.

Done safely, these aerial engagements are conducted at a safe distance with proper communication between the aircraft. But U.S. officials have been worried for months that some sort of incident or miscommunication over the Black Sea could lead to a larger problem as the war in nearby Ukraine continues.

And the language U.S. officials used to describe Russia’s actions indicated that the episode was unusual.

U.S. officials say the incident violated the rules of the airways in several ways. The Russian fighter jets zoomed perilously close to the remotely piloted, unarmed aircraft several times in international airspace in an apparent effort to force it off course. The fighters dumped jet fuel on the drone to sully its camera or damage its other sensors.

On a final pass, American officials said, one of the Russian jets struck the drone’s rear propeller, damaging it so badly that U.S. operators were forced to ditch the $32 million aircraft in waters about 75 miles southwest of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

Russia has denied any wrongdoing and initially blamed the crash on faulty maneuvering by the American drone operators. On Wednesday, Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, said the incident was caused by U.S. noncompliance with a flight restriction zone declared by Russia, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, which called U.S. drone flights off the coast of Crimea “provocative in nature.”

U.S. Drone Downed in the Black Sea

American officials said a U.S. drone that was intercepted by two Russian warplanes went down 75 miles southwest of Crimea.

BELARUS

poland

Kyiv

UKRAINE

RUSSIA

moldova

Odesa

ROMANIA

CRIMEA

Sevastopol

BLACK SEA

georgia

BULGARIA

bosporus

GREECE

Istanbul

Dardanelles

TURKEY

Aegean

Sea

200 miles

BELARUS

RUSSIA

Kyiv

UKRAINE

Odesa

ROMANIA

CRIMEA

Sevastopol

BLACK SEA

georgia

BULGARIA

bosporus

GREECE

Istanbul

TURKEY

Dardanelles

200 miles

“I just got off the phone with my Russian counterpart, Minister Shoigu,” Mr. Austin said at a Pentagon briefing. “As I’ve said repeatedly, it’s important that great powers be models of transparency and communication, and the United States will continue to fly and to operate wherever international law allows.”

Mr. Shoigu countered that the incident was caused by U.S. noncompliance with a flight restriction zone declared by Russia, the Russian Ministry of Defense said in a statement. It called U.S. drone flights off the coast of Crimea “provocative in nature.”

Russia initially denied that its warplanes were to blame, saying in a statement on Tuesday that after the Russian Air Force scrambled fighter jets to identify the drone, the unmanned U.S. aircraft maneuvered sharply, lost altitude and hit the water.

Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also spoke with his Russian counterpart, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov. The two leaders discussed “several security-related issues of concern,” a spokesman for General Milley said in a short statement.

In the nearly 13 months since Russia invaded Ukraine, General Gerasimov has generally avoided talking to General Milley. The two men last spoke late in October.

The phone calls underscored the seriousness of the drone incident, in which the Pentagon has said it downed the reconnaissance drone in sea after a Russian warplane struck its propeller. It was the first known physical contact between the Russian and U.S. militaries since the war in Ukraine began, bringing the two countries closer to direct conflict at a time when tensions in the region are already high.

The Pentagon has said it was working to declassify surveillance footage from the drone that would show the crash.

General Milley told reporters at the Pentagon that the drone sank into water 4,000 to 5,000 feet deep. That depth, he said, will make its recovery difficult. He said that defense officials have not decided whether they will try to recover the debris, as the United States does not have any naval ships in the Black Sea at the moment. But he indicated that U.S. allies could help recover the drone if necessary.

“There’s probably not a lot to recover, frankly,” General Milley said. “As far as the loss of anything of sensitive intelligence, etc., as normal, we would take and we did take mitigating measures, so we’re quite confident that whatever was of value is no longer of value.”

A defense official said the Pentagon remotely “wiped” sensitive intelligence from the drone. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

Russia demanded an end to U.S. military flights near its territory. But Mr. Austin said earlier on Wednesday, at the beginning of a virtual meeting on Ukraine with allies, that the United States would continue to fly spy planes over international waters, including the Black Sea.

The United States and Ukraine say the unarmed American drone was flying in international airspace on a routine surveillance and reconnaissance mission. American and Ukrainian officials have said they share intelligence gathered by such missions, particularly related to the threat posed by Russian warships and submarines in the Black Sea.

New details emerged about what happened in the roughly 40 minutes leading up to the collision. During that time, while the drone was flying at about 25,000 feet, two Russian Su-27 fighter jets made 19 high-speed passes near the Reaper, dumping jet fuel on it during the last three or four, a senior U.S. military official said on Wednesday.

The collision happened on the last pass, as one of the Russian planes approached the drone at a high speed from behind. As the jet pulled up sharply, it collided with the MQ-9’s rear propeller, the official said. ABC News previously reported the details of the collision.

One of the MQ-9’s propeller blades was damaged in the collision, and while there was a temporary loss of contact between the drone and its operators, the controllers ultimately were able to bring down the $32 million aircraft in the sea about 75 miles southwest of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, which Russia has used as a base for launching devastating strikes.

Both Russian warplanes returned to base in Crimea, but it was unclear what damage, if any, the Russian jet involved in the collision suffered, the official said.

Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, said on Wednesday that Russia was trying to retrieve the wreckage of the drone.

“I don’t know if we will be able to get it or not,” he said. “But we need to do it, and we will definitely work on it. I hope, of course, for success.”

Valerie Hopkins contributed reporting from Berlin.

What does the drone footage show?

The 42-second color video clip, shot from the drone itself, shows two high-speed passes by Russian Su-27 fighter jets, each time spraying a substance that the Pentagon said was jet fuel on the American MQ-9 Reaper drone. On a final pass, the camera feed is lost for about 60 seconds. During that time, the Pentagon says, one of the Russian jets collides with the drone. When the feed resumes, the drone’s propeller is shown to be damaged.

What does the footage not show?

The footage released by the Pentagon does not show the collision itself, or the subsequent crash into the sea. The video is shot at high altitude and over water, but it is not clear where the episode took place.

Where did the incident happen?

The Pentagon said that Russian warplanes intercepted the drone over international waters. U.S. officials also said that the drone was flying in international airspace and had crashed in waters southwest of Ukraine’s Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014 and which Moscow considers part of Russian territory.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said that the drone had been flying near the Crimean Peninsula and was headed toward the Russian border with its identifying transponder off. Moscow said this was a violation of the instructions Russia has issued for the airspace over its military operations in Ukraine.

U.S. Drone Downed in the Black Sea

American officials said a U.S. drone that was intercepted by two Russian warplanes went down 75 miles southwest of Crimea.

BELARUS

poland

Kyiv

UKRAINE

RUSSIA

moldova

Odesa

ROMANIA

CRIMEA

Sevastopol

BLACK SEA

georgia

BULGARIA

bosporus

GREECE

Istanbul

Dardanelles

TURKEY

Aegean

Sea

200 miles

BELARUS

RUSSIA

Kyiv

UKRAINE

Odesa

ROMANIA

CRIMEA

Sevastopol

BLACK SEA

georgia

BULGARIA

bosporus

GREECE

Istanbul

TURKEY

Dardanelles

200 miles

What are the U.S. and Russia saying?

A senior U.S. military official said the drone had taken off from its base in Romania early on Tuesday for a regularly scheduled reconnaissance mission. The drone’s cameras can observe Crimea from international airspace, the official said, and such missions, which have taken place since before the full-scale war in Ukraine began, can last up to 10 hours.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said on Wednesday that the incident would not deter such flights, adding that “the United States will continue to fly and to operate wherever international law allows.” He also blamed Moscow, accusing it of “dangerous and reckless and unprofessional behavior.”

Moscow’s ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, said that the drone was conducting “unacceptable” activity in the vicinity of Russia’s borders. Mr. Antonov said that U.S. drones in the area collect data that is passed to Ukraine to enable it to conduct strikes on Russian territory, apparently referring to attacks in Crimea.

Where is the drone now?

Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the drone went down in waters 4,000 to 5,000 feet deep and that any recovery would be difficult.

Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, said on state television on Wednesday that the Russian authorities were trying to retrieve the remnants of the drone. John F. Kirby, a spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, said the United States was “still assessing whether there can be any kind of recovery effort mounted.”

The Ukrainian military reported unusual Russian naval activity in the Black Sea on Thursday morning, saying that more ships than usual were deployed in a way that could suggest a search for the drone’s wreckage was underway.

General Milley played down the value of any intelligence that could be recovered were the drone to be raised.

What happens next?

The incident immediately raised friction between the Kremlin and Washington. The United States, with other allies, has supplied Ukraine with billions of dollars in military aid to sustain its defense against Russia, but it has also tried to manage tensions with Moscow and sought to avoid a direct military clash.

There were signs, however, that Washington and Moscow were both eager to avoid allowing the confrontation to cause a further deterioration of relations.

Valerie Hopkins and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.