MOSCOW (Realist English). Russia’s military intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov has met with a representative of the US military attaché’s office in Moscow and handed over materials related to a Ukrainian drone shot down over Russia’s Novgorod region late last month, the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation said on Thursday.
According to the ministry, Kostyukov, who heads the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of Russia’s General Staff, provided the US side with decoded routing data and the navigation controller recovered from the unmanned aerial vehicle intercepted on December 29. Russian officials claim the drone was used in an attempted strike on a complex of buildings belonging to the Russian president’s residence in the Novgorod region.
Footage released by the defence ministry showed Kostyukov saying that analysis carried out by Russian security services had “unequivocally confirmed” the intended target. “The decoding of the data stored in the navigation controllers of the unmanned aerial vehicles has established with absolute certainty that the target of the attack was the complex of buildings of the residence of the President of the Russian Federation in the Novgorod region,” he said.
Kostyukov added that transferring both the controller itself and the technical documentation to the US side should “remove any questions and help establish the truth.” He noted that in several cases the navigation systems of downed drones remained technically intact, allowing specialists to conduct a detailed forensic analysis.
Earlier on Thursday, the Russian defence ministry said it planned to pass evidence to the United States supporting its claim that the presidential residence was the intended target of the drone attack.
On December 31, Major General Alexander Romanenkov, head of Russia’s anti-aircraft missile forces, told a briefing that Ukraine had used 91 long-range drones between December 28 and 29. He said the drones were launched from Ukraine’s Sumy and Chernihiv regions and were allegedly involved in an attempted attack on the presidential residence in the Novgorod region.