ZAGREB, 13 April 2022 - The Soviet-era military drone that crashed in Zagreb last month was armed, it carrying a bomb in place of a camera, Nova TV reported on Tuesday night citing sources close to the investigation.

The TU-141 unmanned aerial vehicle crashed near a student dorm in the Jarun district of southwest Zagreb shortly after 11 pm on 10 March, damaging about 40 cars in a nearby car park, but injuring no one. It came from Ukraine, having flown over NATO members Romania and Hungary before crashing in the Croatian capital after running out of fuel. It remains unclear who launched it.

The Zagreb County Prosecutor's Office is due to announce the results of the investigation carried out so far at a press conference starting at 11 am on Wednesday.

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ZAGREB, 23 March 2022 - A ballistic examination of metal fragments of a military drone that crashed in Zagreb two weeks ago has found that it was an aerial bomb with a fuse, but no final conclusion could be made as regards traces of explosive, the Zagreb County Prosecutor's Office said on Wednesday.

Nova TV reported on Tuesday evening, citing sources close to the investigation, that no traces of explosive had been found on the parts of the unmanned aerial vehicle that had been examined.

The Prosecutor's Office said it had received the results of the ballistic examination and only partial results of the chemical and physical examination, adding that the results of the examinations conducted so far were not sufficient for a final conclusion.

The Prosecutor's Office said it was continuing the investigation in coordination with the Ivan Vučetić Forensic Science Centre, the Criminal Investigation Department, the Military Police and intelligence agencies.

The Soviet-era military drone crashed near a student dorm in the Jarun district of southwest Zagreb shortly after 11 pm on 10 March, damaging about 40 cars in a nearby car park, but injuring no one. It came from Ukraine, having flown over NATO members Romania and Hungary before crashing in the Croatian capital after running out of fuel.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said last week the government had reliable and verified information that the unmanned aerial vehicle was armed with a bomb that had mostly likely exploded underground.

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ZAGREB, 18 March (2022) - PM Andrej Plenković said on Friday after talks with opposition MPs on the situation in Ukraine and last week's crash of an unmanned aerial vehicle in Zagreb that they seemed to be satisfied with the information presented at the meeting, and that he suggested holding such meetings on an as-needed basis.

A special item on the agenda of the meeting, held in the government offices, was information on last week's crash of an unmanned aerial vehicle near a student dorm in Zagreb.

"We believe our colleagues from the Opposition have obtained valuable new information that will help them take a position when making comments, in political debates and when assessing the seriousness of the situation," Plenković told reporters after the talks.

He said that opposition politicians were mostly satisfied and that the information they obtained today would be useful to them when making public statements.

"(We need) the greatest possible amount of responsible behaviour, responsible statements, politics that is on the right side of both law and history... in the circumstances that have been anything but normal since 24 February," he said.

The PM said the opposition MPs were provided with reliable and verified information that the drone was armed, that an explosion occurred and that the device in question was most probably an aerial bomb that exploded on impact.

A fuse and bomb fragments have been found and it has been established beyond doubt that the drone, normally intended for reconnaissance, was adapted to carry a weapon, he said.

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ZAGREB, 12 March 2022 - President Zoran Milanović is being updated about a probe into the crash of a drone in Zagreb, his office said on Saturday, adding that the blame is not only on NATO but the member states, too, although it is not the time to point fingers but draw a lesson so that it does not happen again.

The president is in contact with the leaders of the Armed Forces and the security services and is being updated on the course of the investigation and new information concerning Thursday night's crash, his office said when asked if the president was familiar with the details of the investigation.

Asked about the actions of NATO as well as Hungary and Romania, through whose airspaces the drone passed, Milanović's office said that the president stated his position yesterday.

"The culprit should not be sough only in NATO, the responsibility is also on the member states over which the aircraft flew without their reaction. But it is not the time to point the finger at anyone. It's more important that we draw a lesson from this event and that this does not happen again," the president's office said.

On Friday, Milanović also wondered how it was possible for an unsophisticated drone to spend almost an hour on the territory of a NATO member state without anyone seeing it. He said this event was an issue for the joint NATO command in Spain which should have all the information in the shortest possible period of time and react.

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ZAGREB, 11 March (2022) - NATO's integrated air and missile defence tracked the flight path of an object which subsequently crashed in Zagreb, an official of NATO told Hina on Friday.

"NATO's integrated air and missile defence tracked the flight path of an object which subsequently crashed in Zagreb. The Croatian authorities have announced that they are investigating this incident," a NATO spokesman, Daniele Riggio, said in his brief answer to HINA's query.

According to some speculations, a Tu-141 "Strizh" reconnaissance drone is believed to have arrived in Croatia from Ukraine, flying across Romania's and Hungary's airspace.

Croatian Defence Minister Mario Banožić said earlier today that the drone had been detected by Croatian radars and that it had been under surveillance as soon as it entered Croatia's airspace.

It crashed seven minutes after entering Croatia's air space, and the fall happened shortly after 2300 hours.

President Zoran Milanović said that radars in Croatia had detected the object which was in the Croatian airspace for a brief period. He also added that no alert information had been provided to Croatia.

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ZAGREB, 11 March 2022 - Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said on Friday the most important thing was to establish who launched the drone which crashed in Zagreb last night and if it reached Croatia by accident or deliberately.

He informed the leaders of other EU member states at a summit in Versailles about the incident and said Croatia had experts for such situations.

"We will share with others the things they find out," he said at the end of the summit.

"They received this information with maximum seriousness. It's not usual for an aircraft that is 14 metres long and weighs six tonnes to fall on a capital city."

Asked if NATO tracked the drone and if Croatia was informed about it, Plenković said, "If someone had been notified, the reaction would have been different. Our planes would have taken off and reacted."

This was a totally unforeseen situation, he added.

A NATO spokesman told Hina the alliance's air defence tracked the drone's flight path.

The Russian-made drone arrived in Croatia from Hungary, and in Hungary from Romania. It was in Croatia's airspace for six or seven minutes before crashing in a residential area in Zagreb.

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ZAGREB, 11 March (2022) - President Zoran Milanović said on Friday that an unmanned aerial vehicle's crash in Zagreb was a serious incident, and the assessment is that the incident was not directed against Croatia, and that it was likely that control had been lost over the drone that had probably come from Ukraine.

The unmanned aerial vehicle fell in the area of Jarun, and fortunately there were no human casualties, the president said at an extraordinary news conference.

An investigation is under way to establish how it could happen that a six-tonne aerial vehicle, the size of an aircraft, had not been detected why flying all the way from Ukraine to Zagreb, he said.

The assessments show that the incident was not directed against Croatia and that the aerial vehicle departed from Ukraine and flew over two NATO member states -- Romania and Hungary -- before entering Croatia's airspace.

How could it happen that an unsophisticated aerial vehicle had flown unnoticed nearly an hour in the airspace of NATO member states, the president wondered.

Military services have been included in the investigation. It seems now that the aerial vehicle had flown from Ukraine, fell in Zagreb when it ran out of fuel and control over it was lost, said the president.

Milanović convened the press conference after being briefed by the chief of the General Staff of the Armed Services and the directors of security and intelligence agencies. Milanović said that he had also spoken with Prime Minister Andrej Plenković.

The president said that radars in Croatia had detected the object which was in the Croatian airspace for a brief period.

He also said that this was not the right time to call out anybody over the incident.

The president also did not find it necessary to convene the National Security Council which, he said, is not an operational agency.

He described the state of affairs in the national air defence system as unsatisfactory, however in such an extraordinary and unpredictable situation, Croatia depends on partners and members of NATO, and omissions were made there, he concluded.

Milanović commented that no international media outlets had reported about this incident.

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