The US MQ-9 Reaper drone shot down as deep as 2,953 feet in the Black Sea spotted the Kremlin, according to a source close to the Russian Defense Ministry.

As the source reportedly told ForPost, the American drone was spotted off the port of Sevastopol at a depth of about 850-900 meters.

“An underwater robot descended to the bottom of the sea, which discovered the MQ-9 Reaper at a depth of about 850-900 meters. Not far from this zone is a branch of the South Stream natural gas pipeline. the source told ForPost.

The US drone crashed in the Black Sea after colliding with two Russian Su-27 fighter jets on Tuesday (March 14). The units of the Russian Navy had started from the first moment the efforts to locate the wreckage of the drone.

It is unclear how long it might take a Russian rescue operation to raise the downed drone.

Earlier today, footage released by the Pentagon showed the moment a Russian fighter jet attacked a US MQ-9 Reaper drone in international airspace over the Black Sea.

The crash is the first direct confrontation between Russia and the US since the start of the war in Ukraine.

Russia had initially claimed that there was no contact with the drone but the video shows the opposite.

Moscow said it would work to recover the wreckage after previously warning it would “view any action with US weapons as openly hostile”.

US officials also assured that measures had been taken to ensure that no information could be recovered by foreign actors from the remains of the drone.