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Two incidents that shaped 14 March 2023
Summary
A look back at a Black Sea drone collision and a Lithuanian parliamentary vote on Wagner.
What happened on 14 March 2023, the day before 15 March 2023, that drew attention from Washington to Vilnius? Two separate events linked to Russia's war in Ukraine: a clash over the Black Sea and a vote in Lithuania's parliament.
On the morning of 14 March 2023, Russian Su-27 fighter jets intercepted and hit a United States Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Black Sea. The collision damaged the drone's propeller, and the United States crashed the drone into international waters. Later accounts described the episode as the first direct contact between the Russian and United States air forces since the Cold War.
The same day, Lithuania's Seimas voted to recognise the Wagner Group, the Russian paramilitary force, as a terrorist organisation. Lawmakers cited the group's numerous crimes in Ukraine, including the killing and torturing of civilians.
The two events were not connected in the reports of the time. Together, though, they showed the war's reach well beyond the front line: one in the airspace above the Black Sea, where Russian and American aircraft came into contact, the other in a parliamentary chamber in a neighbouring state that put a formal label on a force fighting in Ukraine.
