OSCE drone disappears over the Donbas
The Special Monitoring Mission of the OSCE lost its drone over the territory of the Donbas which is not controlled by Ukraine. The drone was recording the movement of Russian military equipment, reported the command the Ukrainian Joint Forces Operation (JFO) citing the SMM report.
The JFO reported that the incident happened at 1:18 AM on October 27. While flying over an area near Kalynove, 72 km east of Donetsk, an SMM long-range unmanned aerial vehicle or UAV spotted a 9K33 Osa surface-to-air missile system and a fuel truck east of Nyzhnokrynske, an area 66 KM east of Donetsk that is also not controlled by Ukraine.
The UAV was immediately re-directed north towards Saurivka. At 01:36, the UAV spotted a convoy of seven trucks on a dirt road near the border with the Russian Federation where there are no border crossing facilities. The trucks were driving in a south-westerly direction towards the town of Manych. The UAV was then re-directed south towards Nyzhnokrynske in order to continue observing the convoy.
“At 01:53 the SMM lost all communications with the UAV while it was flying at an altitude of about 7.000ft over an area south-east of Nyzhnokrynske. For about 35 minutes before communications were lost, the UAV had experienced signal interference, assessed as jamming, at intervals in areas near Saurivka and Nyzhnokrynske. The UAV did not return to its ground control station near Stepanivka (government-controlled, 54km north of Donetsk) and is considered lost,” the report says.
Earlier, the OSCE Mission found military vehicles in the Russian “humanitarian convoy” in the territory which is not controlled by Ukraine in the Donetsk region.