Nero, the emperor of Rome from AD 54 until AD 68, reportedly uttered those famous last words before his death in exile. Experts believe he may have left behind evidence of his love of the arts in the form of a theater he built near what today is the Vatican.
An archaeological excavation carried out in the courtyard of the frescoed Palazzo della Rovere has brought to light structures and decorations that experts say could be the remains of that theater.
Daniela Porro, the special superintendent of Rome, said Wednesday this “exceptional” discovery is believed to be the place where Nero held rehearsals for poetry and singing performances, which were mentioned in Roman writings, but until now never located.
Archaeologists have been working on the site since 2020 and say they’ve found part of the hemicycle-shaped seating section, along with elegant columns in precious and valuable marbles, refined decorations in gold-leaf on stucco and storage rooms for costumes and scenery.
The dig, which was carried out in a circumscribed area within the walls of the grand palazzo, situated on Via della Conciliazione, just a few steps from St. Peter’s Square, also gifted other rich historical findings. These include the possible remains of the Horti di Agrippina, which is where Caligula built a large circus for horse racing, as well as traces of the production and pilgrimage activities from the medieval age and even artifacts from the 15th century.
Archaeologists say they’re particularly thrilled to have found rare specimens of medieval glass goblets, cooking pots to make bread in, coins, bits of musical instruments and combs made from bone, “tools” used to make rosary beads and small insignia of medieval Christian devotion worn on pilgrims’ clothing.
Archaeologist Marzia Di Mento, who is in charge of the dig, says that the findings will take years to study.
“It is a superb dig, one that every archaeologist dreams of…..being able to dig in this built-up historically-rich area is so rare,” she told reporters.
Archeologists say work is still in progress to study, catalogue and analyze all the findings before the area will be covered over for protection and the grand palazzo and garden restored to its original Renaissance grandeur.
Part of the building will become a Four Seasons hotel that is expected to open in 2025.
Local officials say the artifacts will be put on display and all the dig’s findings put in a city-run public databank to add to the wealth of information gathered over the years on life in Rome throughout the centuries.
(WASHINGTON) — Trevor Reed, the former U.S. Marine who was wrongfully detained in Russia before being released in a prisoner swap, has been injured while fighting in Ukraine, according to a Biden administration official.
Reed is expected to make a “full recovery,” two sources familiar with the situation told ABC News on Wednesday. He is currently being treated at the Landstuhl Medical Center Army in Germany, according to sources.
Reed was hit by shrapnel, which struck him in both legs, one source told ABC News.
Reed traveled to Ukraine in November 2022 as a volunteer, with no affiliation with the U.S. government, a source told ABC News.
He was hurt after his unit advanced near the key city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, where Ukrainian troops have been pushing forward as part of their counteroffensive, one source said. The unit had successfully pushed back Russian forces and recaptured some territory when Reed and others were wounded, one source said.
State Department officials provided assistance to Reed directly after learning he was hurt, ABC News has learned. With the help of a nongovernmental organization, Reed was taken to Germany to receive medical care, State Department Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel said during a press briefing on Tuesday.
Reed “was not engaged in any activities on behalf of the U.S. government,” Patel added.
White House spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday that he was “not aware” that the U.S. government knew about Reed’s plans to fight in Ukraine ahead of time.
“Other Americans have fought in Ukraine, unfortunately, and they don’t have to report their departure or their whereabouts to the United States government. I’m aware of no information that we had,” he said.
Kirby also said he was unaware of any communication with Russia about Reed since he was injured.
A spokesperson for Reed’s family declined to comment.
Reed was arrested in 2019 when he was visiting his Russian girlfriend, a recent law graduate, in Moscow. He was wrongfully detained for nearly three years.
In April 2022, he was freed as part of a prisoner swap between the Biden administration and the Kremlin.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday that U.S. officials don’t believe Reed’s decision to fight in Ukraine should impact efforts to free Americans Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich from Russian detention.
Whelan, a businessman and former U.S. Marine, has been in custody in Russia since 2018. Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, has been detained since March.
“This case is completely separate,” Jean-Pierre said. “They are not the same and they are treated entirely differently.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken echoed those comments during a press availability in Tonga, saying the development “shouldn’t have any effect” on efforts to free the two detainees.
“My expectation is that even as we’re dealing with all sorts of other challenges in our relationship with Russia, we will and we are determined to bring both Evan and Paul home,” he said.
Blinken said Reed’s case “underscores why we continue to call on Americans not to travel to Ukraine and to not fight there.”
ABC News’ Shannon Crawford, Patrick Reevell, Conor Finnegan and Tanya Stukalova contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — Actor Kevin Spacey was on Wednesday found not guilty in a London court of a series of sexual assaults against several accusers.
Twelve jurors at the Southwark Crown Court had begun deliberating at about noon on Monday following a three-week trial. Spacey, 64, had pleaded not guilty to 12 charges of sexual assault.
The jury cleared Spacey of nine charges. The additional charges had been struck down before the jury began its deliberations.
Prosecutors had sought during the trial to label Spacey as a “sexual bully,” and the actor took the stand to defend himself. Musician Elton John appeared as a witness for the defense, testifying remotely from Monaco about Spacey once attending a gala at his Windsor home.
Spacey had appeared in a London court in July 2022 to plead not guilty after Metropolitan Police formally charged him.
The Crown Prosecution Service announced five charges against Spacey in May 2022, accusing him of sexual assaults against three men and one charge of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent, prosecutors said. An additional seven charges were added in November 2022.
The Academy Award-winning actor has faced allegations and charges of sexual assault in both the United Kingdom and United States. He was found not liable in October in a civil sexual assault suit brought by fellow actor Anthony Rapp in New York City.
Spacey in May 2022 told ABC News’ Good Morning America that he would “voluntarily” appear in court in London.
“I very much appreciate the Crown Prosecution Service’s statement in which they carefully reminded the media and the public that I am entitled to a fair trial, and innocent until proven otherwise,” Spacey told GMA at the time. “While I am disappointed with their decision to move forward, I will voluntarily appear in the U.K. as soon as can be arranged and defend myself against these charges, which I am confident will prove my innocence.”
Several of the U.K. allegations from 2001 and 2013 stemmed from Spacey’s tenure as artistic director at The Old Vic, a London theater company. Allegations were made public in 2017, two years after Spacey had left his post.
“These allegations have been a shock and a disturbing surprise to many of us,” Matthew Warchus, who followed Spacey as artistic director, said in a statement issued at the time. “It is incorrect, unfair and irresponsible to say that everybody knew.”
(NEW YORK) — With Guatemalan authorities appearing to ramp up their interference in the country’s presidential election, including last week’s raids of the election tribunal offices and the anti-corruption candidate’s party offices, the U.S. is sending stronger signals to back off.
The top U.S. diplomat for the Western Hemisphere called Guatemala’s foreign minister on Tuesday to stress that the runoff should be allowed to take place “without interference or harassment of the candidates or political parties. Guatemalans have the right to elect their government,” Assistant Secretary of State Brian Nichols said on social media on Monday.
Guatemalan Foreign Minister Mario Búcaro confirmed the call took place, but spun the conversation as a “pleasure,” saying they had discussed the “positive role that the executive branch of Guatemala has played in guaranteeing the development of the electoral process.”
A Biden administration official confirmed to ABC News that the State Department will also host both runoff candidates — reform candidate Bernardo Arévalo and establishment candidate, former first lady Sandra Torres — in Washington.
“We routinely engage with candidates ahead of elections in support of democratic institutions and to deepen relations between the United States and other countries,” the official said.
The meetings are expected to send a growing message that the U.S. government is closely watching the situation and is invested in a free and fair election.
So is the rest of the region. The Organization of American States is meeting for a special session Wednesday, with briefings by the head of its election observation mission and the president of Guatemala’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal, who declared Arévalo and Torres the runoff candidates and had their offices raided last Thursday.
The concern here is only growing because of the increasingly authoritarian measures Guatemala’s ruling class has been taking to crack down on political opposition, free speech, and anti-corruption measures. Saturday, for example, also marks one year of detention for prominent investigative journalist José Rubén Zamora, who was sentenced to six years in prison last month on bogus charges.
At the National Press Club in Washington Wednesday, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Zamora’s son and a Guatemalan journalist in exile will mark his first year in prison and again raise concerns about “the erosion of democracy in the country and the region,” per a press release.
Look around the region, and that erosion is stark — in El Salvador and Honduras, whose governments are using severe anti-gang measures to violate human rights — and especially in Nicaragua, where dictator Daniel Ortega and his wife and Vice President Rosario Murillo have sent tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Nicaraguans fleeing, including in record numbers to the U.S. southern border.
Arévalo’s Semilla Party stunned the South American nation with a second-place finish in the June elections, beating out other establishment candidates in a vote that international observers from the OAS and the European Union determined was spared of major inconsistencies.
But the election environment had long been tainted by Guatemalan authorities, with President Alejandro Giammattei’s government barring three top opposition candidates in the months before the vote — including the leading candidate.
That sparked strong statements of condemnation from the U.S., EU and others, but it also brought a wave of protest votes from Guatemalans. Nearly 25% of the ballots cast in that first round were either spoiled or marked “null” — hundreds of thousands showing they have zero faith left in the country’s political system.
But the rest of those protest votes went to Arévalo, who ran a campaign zeroed in on corruption after decades of rule by a small group of corrupt elites. The son of the first democratically elected Guatemalan president, Arévalo laid out detailed plans for reforms, including creating a national anti-corruption system.
Guatemala once had a similar anti-corruption court, backed by the U.N. and the U.S., but it was disbanded in 2019 by Giammattei’s predecessor, with critics saying the issue has only worsened since then.
Just last week, the U.S. sanctioned 10 Guatemalan officials, barring them from obtaining U.S. visas. The list includes several judges and prosecutors accused by the State Department of “authorizing politically motivated criminal charges against journalists for exercising their freedom of expression as protected by Guatemalan law,” including Zamora.
(LONDON) — Wildfires that have killed at least 34 people in northern Algeria over the past several days are now almost entirely under control, officials said.
As of Tuesday afternoon, 80% of the wildfires had been extinguished, according to the Algerian Ministry of the Interior, which in a statement credited the “positive results” to the uninterrupted mobilization of firefighters overnight, the use of firefighting aircraft and a drop in both wind speed and air temperature.
Firefighting operations are continuing, with 13 hotspots remaining across seven provinces. The areas where blazes have been put out are being monitored, the interior ministry said.
Local authorities in the areas where the wildfires are contained have begun to inspect the damage and count the number of people affected, according to the interior ministry.
The flames ignited Sunday and rapidly spread across forests and agricultural areas in at least 16 of Algeria’s 48 provinces, driven by strong winds and scorching heat. The hardest-hit areas were in the coastal provinces of Bejaia, Bouira and Jijel, east of the capital Algiers. At least 1,500 people were evacuated, the interior ministry said.
Some 8,000 firefighters and 529 trucks were deployed to battle the raging blazes alongside military firefighting aircraft. Among those killed were 10 soldiers who were fighting the flames in Bejaia, according to the interior ministry.
Two people suspected of starting the wildfires in Bejaia were arrested on Monday, according to the provincial attorney general’s office.
Temperatures are forecast to reach as high as 50 degrees Celsius, or 122 degrees Fahrenheit, in the southern part of the North African nation on Thursday and Friday, according to the Algerian National Office of Meteorology.
Algeria is susceptible to wildfires in the summertime. Last August, at least 43 people were killed and 200 others were injured by blazes that burned through forest and urban areas in the eastern part of the country, according to the Algerian Red Crescent.
(LONDON) — As wildfire flames crept toward Zena Katsaros’ home in Kiotari, a village in Rhodes, on Friday, she fled with her bathing suit and a few other items.
She slept on the beach that first night, surrounded by about 200 other people who had also left their houses, she said.
“It was all like a nightmare, like a war zone,” Katsaros told ABC News.
On Monday, as she stood looking at the rubble of what was once her beach house, she could no longer step inside. The roof was too hot to get close and all that was left standing was the bathroom.
“It’s all gone, totally gone,” she said.
Katsaros is one of thousands of people in Rhodes — and others throughout Greece — who’ve fled their homes as wildfires have spread around the country since early last week.
The most serious fires in the county on Tuesday were burning on Rhodes and Corfu, the Greek Fire Service said in a statement. The rest of the country remained on “high alert” for Wednesday, when high temperatures were again expected, the service said. Southern Europe has been in the grip of a searing heat wave.
“For tomorrow, Wednesday, an extreme risk of fire is predicted in many areas of mainland Greece and a very high risk in the rest of the country,” the service said in a Tuesday statement. “We are going through perhaps the toughest days of the summer with the temperatures showing a further increase.”
Greece officials last week requested the activation of the European Union Civil Protection Mechanism, a coordinated rescue and humanitarian assistance, to fight wildfires. Firefighters and equipment arrived last week from several European countries and Israel.
“In the battle to deal with the fires, firefighters and water vehicles from 10 countries are working alongside the Greek forces and late tonight we expect the arrival of 38 firefighters with 14 vehicles from Serbia,” fire officials said Tuesday.
Temperatures throughout Greece were expected to climb on Wednesday before cooling on Thursday, the Hellenic National Meteorological Center said in a warning.
Winds in the northwest, where at least one fire was burning, were expected to be “very strong” on Wednesday, the alert said, adding, “These intense phenomena will extend before the evening in central Macedonia and Thessaly and at night in the Sporades.”
Two pilots died in a crash of a Canadair CL-215 firefighting plane on Tuesday, the Air Force said in a statement. They had been dropping water on a blaze on the mountainous region near Platanistos, Evia.
As their plane made a turn, it disappeared behind the hills, according to a video of the plane taken moments before the crash. A moment later, a ball of smoke and fire rose from the area.
The pilots, aged 34 and 27, were later found dead, Minister of National Defence Nikos Dendias said in a statement. He declared a three-day mourning period for the Armed Forces “for the loss of life, in the line of duty.”
As Katsaros walked around Kiotari on Tuesday, she saw buildings that had been completely destroyed by the blazes. A friend’s restaurant was destroyed, she said. The town “is gone” and will have to be rebuilt, she said.
When asked if all of her friends and family were safe, Katsaros said, “I don’t know, many are volunteers and we can barely speak to them.”
(WASHINGTON) — Trevor Reed, the former U.S. Marine who was wrongfully detained in Russia before being released in a prisoner swap, has been injured while fighting in Ukraine, according to a Biden administration official.
Reed “was not engaged in any activities on behalf of the U.S. government,” State Department Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel said during a press briefing.
Patel declined to say when or where Reed was hurt in Ukraine.
The former Marine was injured in a landmine explosion, ABC News has learned.
State Department officials provided assistance to Reed directly after learning he was hurt, ABC News has learned.
With the help of a nongovernmental organization, Reed “has been transported to Germany and he is receiving medical care,” Patel said.
A source familiar with Reed’s condition said that he is “alert” and “recovering” from his injuries.
A spokesperson for Reed’s family declined to comment.
Reed was arrested in 2019 when he was visiting his Russian girlfriend, a recent law graduate, in Moscow. He was wrongfully detained for nearly three years.
In April 2022, he was freed as part of a prisoner swap between the Biden administration and the Kremlin.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday that U.S. officials don’t believe Reed’s decision to fight in Ukraine should impact efforts to free Americans Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich from Russian detention.
Whelan, a businessman and former U.S. Marine, has been in custody in Russia since 2018. Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, has been detained since March.
“This case is completely separate,” Jean-Pierre said. “They are not the same and they are treated entirely differently.”
ABC News’ Shannon Crawford contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — As Russia continues its nearly 16-month-long invasion of neighboring Ukraine, political turmoil has erupted in Moscow while Kyiv tries to take back territory.
A feud between Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Russian paramilitary organization Wagner Group, and Russia’s top military brass escalated as Prigozhin’s forces left the front line in Ukraine and marched across the border to seize a key Russian city. They then marched north toward Russia’s capital, seemingly unopposed, before turning around just hours later. The short-lived rebellion was described by international observers as the most significant challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authority in his more than 20 years of rule.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops are in the early stages of a counteroffensive to reclaim the almost one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory that is under Russian control.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jul 25, 1:00 PM EDT
Pentagon announces new $400M aid to Ukraine
The U.S. Department of Defense announced an additional $400 million aid package to Ukrainian forces that includes more weapons and ammunition.
This marks the Biden administration’s 43rd military aid package to Ukraine since August 2021.
Some of the equipment and weapons in this package include, additional munitions for Patriot air defense systems and National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS); Stinger anti-aircraft systems and Javelin and other anti-armor systems and rockets.
-ABC News’ Matthew Seyler
Jul 20, 4:04 PM EDT
Ukraine begins using controversial cluster munitions provided by US
Ukraine has begun using the controversial cluster munitions that the U.S. recently began providing to Ukraine, a U.S. official confirmed to ABC News.
Ukraine, Russia and the U.S. are not signatories to the convention that bans the use of cluster munitions. Russia has used them in the war in Ukraine and so has Ukraine as they a supply of the weapons left over from the Soviet era.
“I believe they have started using them,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said Thursday. “In terms of the effect on the battlefield, I’d really let Ukraine speak to how they intend to employ them. But you know, this is a powerful artillery that we have given them. They have … committed to use it responsibly, to keep track and record where they are using it, so when this war is over, they can begin those de-mining efforts.”
The weapons are considered dangerous to civilians because the small bomblets that are dispersed by the munitions can remain unexploded until someone accidentally stumbles upon them weeks, months or even years later.
-ABC News’ Luis Martinez
Jul 19, 9:47 PM EDT
Russian strikes hit Mykolaiv and Odesa, multiple people injured
Russian forces hit a three-story building and a garage in the city center of Mykolaiv Thursday morning, local time, injuring nine people, including five children, the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration said on Telegram.
There were fatalities stemming from the strikes, but it’s unclear how many at this time, the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration added.
In another incident, Russian strikes hit Odesa early Thursday morning, the Odesa District Administration said on Telegram.
Two people were injured and hospitalized from the attack, according to the Odesa District Administration.
There is destruction “in the center” of Odesa and a fire broke out stemming from the strikes, the administration said.
(NEW YORK) — In the week since U.S. Army Private 2nd Class Travis King crossed into North Korea, American officials have been unable to extract even the most basic information about his condition from tight-lipped officials in Pyongyang — a move experts say could be a play by the country’s authoritarian leader Kim Jong Un to maximize leverage.
“We have not even learned about [King’s] whereabouts, about his status, about his safety,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday.
While the deputy commander of the U.S.-led United Nation’s military force said that conversations about King with North Korea’s military had “commenced,” officials in Washington clarified that Pyongyang had merely confirmed it received an initial message from the U.N. Command about the soldier.
“It is my understanding that there have been no new communications since last week — communications that happened in the early days,” Miller said, adding that outreach from other channels run by the Biden administration had gone unacknowledged.
North Korean state media has said nothing about King — who U.S. officials say willingly crossed into North Korea “without authorization” last week and is in custody in the secretive country — and U.S. allies that retain diplomatic ties with the hermit kingdom have also not been able to gain any insight.
The prolonged silence could be part of a broader strategy, according to Bruce Bennett, a researcher at the RAND Corporation who has worked with the Department of Defense on containing threats posed by North Korea.
“I don’t think it’s particularly out of the ordinary. North Korea likes to force the U.S. into a position of begging because they’re expecting to get more out of the U.S.,” he said.
“If you’re in the position of North Korea — which doesn’t have many strengths — one of their strengths sometimes is simply waiting to create anxiety on the U.S. side and make the United States more prepared to give them more for what they eventually give us,” Bennett added.
That theory was echoed by House Foreign Affairs Chairman Mike McCaul, who expressed concern that North Korea could attempt to use King as a bargaining chip.
“We see this with Russia, China, Iran — when they take an American, particularly a soldier, captive, they exact a price for that,” McCaul, R-Texas, told ABC News’ This Week co-anchor Martha Raddatz. “And that’s what I worry about.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said “there are certainly concerns” that King could be tortured by Pyongyang, even though the soldier is not believed to have had access to classified intelligence.
“They’re trying to figure out a way to make him a public relations success for North Korea,” Bennett said. “They may be trying to force him into denunciation of the U.S. and claiming that he was abused in the military or some such thing.”
Anthony Ruggiero, senior director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program and the former deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs, says Pyongyang could also simply be stalling.
“I think North Korea’s response indicates that they’re still trying to figure out what to do with a relatively low-level military personnel that crossed the border,” he said. “The hard part is deciding what to do.”
And for the U.S., that may also prove to be the most difficult question.
Whether the Biden administration is prepared to make any significant concession for King’s release remains to be seen. While U.S. officials have expressed concern about King’s welfare, they have also underscored that he crossed the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea on his own volition and that it’s unclear he wants to return to the U.S.
Still, Bennett says the pressure to act is building.
“You can already tell on the US side that there’s a great deal of anxiety about this soldier. That’s only natural–the US military is supposed to take care of its own,” he said.
“The U.S. is kind of at North Korea’s mercy here,” said Ruggiero. “It’s not clear that that we really have any leverage.”
Ruggiero noted that while administration officials are likely “game planning” on how to handle requests from North Korea, the U.S. is unlikely to offer up major concessions — such as relief from financial penalties imposed on Pyongyang over its ballistic missile program.
But Ruggiero said former officials such as retiring Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, or even former president and current candidate for the office Donald Trump may be able to move the needle with leader Kim Jong Un.
“I suspect that North Korea spends a lot of time watching what former President Trump says and does on the campaign trail, for no other reason than the relationship that he built with Kim in North Korea,” he said. “But also, at this moment, President Trump is a front runner.”
While Ruggiero said North Korea might ultimately seek engagement with someone closer to the Biden administration, Bennett argues that Kim has shown no appetite for communication with the current president.
“The relationship at this stage is pretty frosty because North Korea is not getting anything out of the U.S. that they would have liked to get,” Bennett said. “With Trump, they were getting recognition that they really wanted.”
For now, Bennett says, just the spotlight King’s case has cast on the hermit kingdom may be enough to satisfy its leader.
“One of the things that Kim Jong Un loves is to be in the Western news. And the longer they keep [King] and the longer they make this difficult for the U.S., the more that Kim Jong Un is likely going to be in the news,” Bennett said. “They don’t really have much in the way of incentives to be responsive.”
There hasn’t been a similar case of an American soldier crossing without authorization into North Korea in four decades. The details of that case remain sparse.
(NEW YORK) — A Russian fighter jet fired flares directly at an American MQ-9 Reaper drone over Syria on Sunday, damaging its propeller, according to U.S. Air Forces Central — the latest in a string of what military officials have denounced as risky and provocative behavior.
The drone was on a counter-terrorism mission against the Islamic State group, according to the Air Force.
“On 23 July, 2023 at 12:23 a.m. (EST) Russian fighter aircraft flew dangerously close to a U.S. MQ-9 drone on a defeat-ISIS mission, harassing the MQ-9 and deploying flares from a position directly overhead, with only a few meters of separation between aircraft,” Air Forces Central Commander Lt. Gen. Alex Grynkewich said.
One of the flares hit the drone, “severely damaging its propeller,” according to Grynkewich.
“The Russian fighter’s blatant disregard for flight safety detracts from our mission to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS. We call upon the Russian forces in Syria to put an immediate end to this reckless, unprovoked, and unprofessional behavior,” he said.
The crew remotely operating the MQ-9 was able to maintain control of the aircraft and fly it back to its home base.
The U.S. military has recently observed what it has called increasingly “unsafe and unprofessional” incidents in the sky.
Last week, a Russian Su-35 fighter endangered the crew of a manned U.S. MC-12 by forcing it to fly through its wake turbulence, according to a release from Air Forces Central.
“This reduced the crew’s ability to safely operate the aircraft and put the four crewmembers’ lives at risk,” the release stated.
And for two days in a row early this month, officials have said, Russian pilots dropped parachute flares into the paths of U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drones, which took evasive maneuvers to avoid damage. Russia claimed the drones had entered airspace designated for a Russian-Syrian counter-drone exercise.
A senior U.S. defense official told reporters there was no such exercise, saying, “It’s just an excuse to go after our MQ-9’s and try to intercept.”
Similar incidents have occurred outside Syria. In March, a Russian fighter collided with a U.S. drone over the Black Sea, bending its propeller. The U.S. was forced to bring the craft down off the coast of Ukraine, according to defense officials.
The U.S. has around 900 troops in eastern Syria assisting in the fight against IS, while Russia has a military presence in northwestern Syria as part of its mission to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Russian and U.S. forces for years have made use of a “deconfliction hotline” to let each other know when they are carrying out missions so as to avoid any dangerous misunderstandings.
The hotline is still used, but “it sometimes gets very heated,” with a lot of back and forth during tense encounters, according to the senior U.S. defense official.
