MOSCOW, September 18. /TASS/. Russia is ready to respond to the seizure of its ships, President Vladimir Putin said and called on the West "to be friends."

He said that Russia had taken note of the European drills in the Baltic Sea, including the practice of seizing civilian vessels.

"I just want to tell them: we’d rather be friends, or we will have to respond," the president said at a meeting of the Military-Industrial Commission.

"It should be obvious to everyone, a truism, understandable. It won't be any other way."

Air defenses down 344 Ukrainian drones over Russia overnight — top brass

On-duty air defenses intercepted and destroyed 344 Ukrainian fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles over the past night over the Leningrad, Novgorod, Bryansk, Kursk, Belgorod, Oryol, Kaluga, Tula, Ryazan, Lipetsk, Vladimir, Rostov, Krasnodar, Moscow Regions, the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District, the Republic of Dagestan and over the Black Sea

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