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The Russian-made unmanned aircraft crossed Romania and Hungary before entering Croatia and slamming late Thursday into a field near a student dormitory. Some 40 parked cars were damaged but no one was injured after a loud blast.
NATO said the alliance’s integrated air and missile defense had tracked the object’s flight path. But the Croatian prime minister said the country’s authorities were not informed and that NATO reacted only after questions were posed by journalists.
“We cannot tolerate this situation, nor should it have ever happened,” Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said while visiting the crash site.
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Plenkovic called on the Hungarian authorities to launch an investigation into why its defenses apparently did not notice the unmanned drone as both Croatia and Romania had little time to react to the fast-moving object.
“Fortunately, something much worse did not happen,” Plenkovic said, adding that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban “found out about this after me.” “This could have fallen on the nuclear power plant in Hungary. Obviously, there was no good reaction and other countries did not react well. Now we have a test from which we have to learn and react much better,” he said.
He said that only an air crash investigation can determine who launched the drone — the Russians or the Ukrainians — after the object is pulled out of a large crater created after impact.
Both Russia and Ukraine have denied they launched the drone.
Military experts say Ukraine is the only known current operator of the Tu-141, which has a wingspan of nearly 4 meters (12 feet) and weighs just over 6 tons.
(AP)