Greek officials said on Thursday, May 21, that a sea drone discovered near the island of Lefkada posed a serious security threat and was identified as a Ukrainian unmanned surface vessel (USV).
According to CNN Greece, an investigation report on the incident was delivered to the Greek prime minister’s office last week and included a detailed technical analysis of the drone.
Greek Defense Minister Nikos Dendias said Athens has no doubt about the drone’s origin.
“There is not the slightest doubt that this was a Ukrainian sea drone. We know what type it is, where it was built and what it was doing,” Dendias said.
The minister described the incident as “extremely dangerous,” warning that a civilian vessel could have been sunk if it collided with the drone.
“If any cruise ship traveling from Venice toward the Eastern Mediterranean had hit this object, it would have gone to the bottom of the sea,” Dendias said during a NATO defense ministers meeting.
He also questioned how many casualties such an incident could have caused.
Greece raises issue with NATO, EU
According to CNN Greece, the issue was discussed during NATO and European Union meetings this week, where Greek officials briefed partners about the investigation.
Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis also discussed the incident with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha.
Athens said it expects formal explanations from Kyiv once the final military report is officially transmitted to the Foreign Ministry.
“Ukraine owes us a very big apology,” Dendias said.
“And beyond the apology, it owes us an absolute assurance that something like this will never happen again in the wider region.”
Athens warns Mediterranean ‘must not become theater of war’
Greek officials stressed that Athens intends to prevent any spillover of the Russo-Ukrainian war into the Mediterranean region.
“The Mediterranean will not become a theater of war,” Greek Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lana Zochiou said, describing the incident as “particularly serious.”
She added that Greece would take “all necessary measures” to ensure similar incidents do not happen again.
Following talks with Croatian Foreign Minister Gordan Radman on Wednesday, Gerapetritis also warned that one of the region’s key challenges is preventing conflicts from spreading into neighboring areas.
“The Mediterranean must remain untouched by military operations – a sea of peace, a sea for its peoples,” he said.
On May 8, Greek media reported that a naval drone identified as a Ukrainian-designed Magura V3 was discovered near the Greek island of Lefkada. The vessel was found in a coastal cave and retrieved by fishermen, who towed it to port. It contained detonators but no explosives.
Greek authorities also said the drone was equipped with advanced communication systems and was still operational when discovered.
Specialists removed three detonators from the vessel, which is not expected to be destroyed but instead examined further.
Back then, officials were considering several scenarios, including the possibility that the drone was used for smuggling operations. Another line of inquiry is whether it could be linked to planned attacks on vessels from Russia’s so-called shadow fleet, used to transport oil to avoid sanctions.
Ukrainian sea drones on May 3 attacked and damaged a pair of Russian shadow fleet tankers near the entrance to the port of Novorossiysk, the naval base the once-mighty Black Sea Fleet retreated to after being forced to abandon its pre-full-scale-invasion base in Crimea earlier in the war.
Both vessels were sanctioned illegal transporters of Russian oil and were set afire and “put out of service,” a joint statement by the Ukrainian Navy and national intelligence service (SBU) said.
Three days before the two tankers were hit off Novorossiysk, on April 29, a pair of Ukrainian Magura sea drones targeted and hit the reported shadow tanker Marquise, in open Black Sea waters some 210 kilometers (130 miles) southeast of Tuapse. The tanker was hit in the stern near the engine and propellers, and at the time reported disabled and drifting.