milly it was milly who said there probably isn t all that much wreckage to recover. it was about 4,000 to 5,000 feet deep of water there. but the russians according to the u.s. officials were able to get to that site. earlier today a senior russian official promised that the russians would try to recover what they could from that drone and learn what s possible. milly had said the u.s. had taken steps to mitigate the collection of any sensitive data. we reported earlier today that before that drone, the u.s. drone that has crashed into the black sea, its operators were able to wipe the sensitive data, the sensitive software information used in intelligence collection from the drone. meaning that though there may be some wreckage there, the u.s. believes there isn t sensitive top secret data just sitting there on top of the black sea. meanwhile the pentagon promising it ll keep operating over international waters and giving the sense of how they view the russian actions here. i ll jus
had essentially declared there was some sort of airspace around its, quote, special military operation the u.s. should have avoided. wolf, there s still certainly disagreement on the cause of this, but at least it seems there s no desire to escalate from this point. we shall see. orenleiberman at the pentagon, thank you very much. joining us now top white house national security official john kirby. john, thanks for joining us. i want to begin with our new reporting that the russians have now reached the site of the drone crash. is there any cause for concern it russia eventually recovers this debris from the drone? well, i certainly can t confirm the reports they re on the site. i m aware of their comments of trying to get there and trying to recover. but the short answer to your question is no. as general milly made clear, we made it impossible for them to be able to glean anything of intelligence value off the remnants of that drone, whatever remnants there might be on the surfa
violations of what it calls its flight restriction zone in that black sea area. should we expect to see russia continue to escalate as it tries to establish new rules in the skies? we don t want to see escalation here and there s no need for that. this m-q9 was flying in international airspace and we re going to continue to fly and operate where international law permits us to. that s what we did in this case. that s what we ll continue to do. we have real national security interests and all that effort is going to continue. secretary austin and general milly both spoke with their russian counter parts today and that was significant. has the biden administration received any assurances at all from russia it ll stop engaging in these kind of aggressive acts against the united states like the downing of this drone, for example? we made it very clear. i know the defense department did in their calls, and we made
probably not a lot to recover, frankly. as far as the loss of anything sensitive intelligence, et cetera, as normal we would take and we did take mitigating measures. so we are quite confident that whatever was of value is no longer of value. in the day and a half or so since this happened there s been a number of communications both in the diplomatic channel and now in the military channel here. and what it seems there s agreement upon there s no desire from the u.s. or russia for escalation around this specific incident. however, the cause of the incident that s where we have entire disagreements. the u.s. making their case clear there from both milly and austin that it was the russian fighter jets who were acting in a reckless fashion there. meanwhile, in a call between austin and his counterpart, the russian defense minister, the minister essentially tried to lecture austin about the u.s. actions here saying the u.s. flew the drone in a provocative fashion, flying around crimea
preparing a massive new offensive, perhaps, you know, when the weather warms some and it s easier to move troops and armor. but there s been growing indications and we heard from the nato secretary-general in recent days that offense least it in early stages has already begun and we ve made seen that in the luhansk region. what s your current assessment of the fighting? i think your intro is great. obviously russia is coming up on a presidential address. so vladimir putin is going to be addressing his people shortly, and he d like to package whatever he s got on the ground as a win. but for the beginning of this and i think general milly framed this well, russia s been losing this, and they ve been hammering on the ground, lost a lot of forces. you mentioned the dfls minister, britain, talked about 90% of the army being in ukraine and in addition he s talked about world war i-like casualties for