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Originally Posted by CroFlames
The Wikipedia article of the incident is well done. Much failure on the part of Croatia, Hungary and Romania, but also NATO as a whole. Their systems are integrated, yet no one shot the thing down.
This was interesting about the incident actually:
I wonder if the Russian/Ukrainian military is that dumb that they programmed the wrong neighborhood into the drone. Doesn't explain why the thing didn't detonate though.
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The whole thing was really fishy and has fueled conspiracy theories. The fact they classified the information quickly and no one wanted to talk about it, doesn't help. I think Spain was the only other NATO country not directly affected that demanded transparency.
I personally don't buy the Yarun/Jarun argument because it would not have been a prime target in March 2022, only a month into the war. The other thing is that given the maximum range of the drone, it would have had to been launched from Western Ukraine, or a small portion of Belarus. Almost everyone agrees that it was launched from Ukraine given the trajectory (Romanian and Hungarian airspace). Russian military control in Western Ukraine was low at the time, making it less likely they launched it, but not impossible. If it was an accident, the kind of error it would take to have it sent so far off course would have been pretty gross.
https://www.uasvision.com/2022/03/14...es-in-croatia/
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It seems that this was actually a Tupolev Tu-141 “Strizh” reconnaissance drone that must have severely malfunctioned and crossed over the entirety of Hungary or parts of neighboring countries and into Croatia from Ukraine. Flying direct from Ukraine’s border to Zagreb is nearly a 350-mile journey. It has been reported that Ukraine has been putting the high-speed, Soviet-era drones to work in recent days following Russia’s invasion of the country. Ukraine is the only known current operator of the Tu-141.
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One conspiracy theory is that Ukraine did it as a failed false flag attack to try and force NATO into an Article 5 situation. The other theory is that Russia did it as a warning to NATO's smaller partners that NATO couldn't protect them and that if things escalated, they could hit cities in that region easily.
Personally, I think the latter theory has potential (possibly from Transnistria), and whatever happened, it unfortunately did shake some of the resolve in the region to do anything that escalates the conflict. I also think that Milanovic took it personally that it was brushed under the rug quickly. While the president is largely a figurehead role in Croatia with little executive power, national security is in his wheelhouse.