Ukrainian drone could have caused mass casualties – Greek defense minister

Nikos Dendias has demanded an apology from Kiev and assurances that such an incident will not happen again

A Ukrainian naval drone found off a Greek island earlier this month could have sunk a civilian ship and led to mass casualties, Greek Defense Minister Nikos Dendias has said.

The unmanned surface vessel (USV) was reportedly a Ukrainian Magura V3 kamikaze drone, capable of carrying an explosive payload of up to 300kg. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and senior government officials were reportedly briefed on the matter last week, according to CNN.

Speaking at a conference on Wednesday, Dendias refused to divulge the details of the investigation, but stressed that the drone could have caused immense damage.

“It was obviously something extremely dangerous… there is not the slightest doubt – I repeat, the slightest doubt – that this is a Ukrainian sea drone,” he said, adding that if a cruise liner crossed paths with the USV, the ship would have been at “the bottom of the sea.”

How many dead would we have mourned? And how permissible is this thing in the Mediterranean?

Dendias stressed that Kiev owes Athens “a very big apology,” as well as “the absolute assurance that something like this will not happen again in the wider region.”

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Ukraine has used such drones for months to attack ships in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, targeting vessels it sees as linked to Moscow. Russia has condemned the strikes, calling them “terrorism and maritime piracy.”

Ukrainian UAVs targeting Russian infrastructure have also increasingly flown through the territory of other countries, such as the Baltic states and Finland, according to Moscow. Several Ukrainian drones have crashed in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland in recent weeks.

Russian Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu said in April that should these countries deliberately allow Ukrainian drones to pass through their airspace, they become “open accomplices in aggression against Russia.” In that case, Moscow has the right to self-defense against such an “armed attack,” he warned.