-Ukraine purchases Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones
President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko announced Saturday that an agreement with Turkey was made for the purchase of six Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicles.
"Bilateral military-technical agreements is a privilege of every sovereign state," Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the Russian media after the announcement, adding that, "Giving Ukraine weapons should not turn into a worsening factor of the crisis in the region.”
Meanwhile, an unnamed official from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said that despite the drones’ ability to strike with weapons from the air, the TB2’s would be used only for reconnaissance purposes.
A Russian Defense Ministry official also said that if the TB2's were to be used only for exploration, the drones should not accelerate the conflict in Ukraine.
One of Russia's leading economic newspapers, Russian daily Kommersant, published a detailed report on the issue with the headline: "Turkey supports Ukraine from the air."
Russian experts claim the drones will not make a radical change in the course of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine’s Donbass region.
Nonetheless, a large number of Russian bloggers on the defense industry also prepared detailed analyses of the TB2.