At the meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group, Ukraine ignored requests from representatives of the unrecognized Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics to clarify the situation with the use of the Bayraktar unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), Interfax reports, citing the plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation in the contact group Boris Gryzlov.
“One of the issues at the meeting of the Contact Group was the discussion of yesterday’s publications by Ukrainian servicemen on the combat use of the Bayraktar UAV in Donbass … The urgent requests of representatives of Donbass to clarify the situation and clearly confirm or deny the fact that Ukraine is using UAVs in violation of the Minsk agreements and agreements on the strengthening of the truce were ignored by the Ukrainian delegation, ”Gryzlov told reporters following a meeting of the contact group.
He also stressed that the representatives of Ukraine at first “confirmed the fact of the use of the UAV in Donbass and the presence of the corresponding order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine”, but towards the end of the meeting “it became known about the denial in the media by the Minister of Defense of Ukraine Andriy Taran of the fact of the combat use of the UAV” Bayraktar “” …
The meeting itself Gryzlov described as “one of the most intense and difficult in all the time of our work.”
Earlier, the Ukrainian “Channel 5” reported about the use of Turkish drones by the Ukrainian military in the territory of Donbass. Bayraktar TB2 is an operational-tactical mid-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle with a long flight duration. An armed drone is capable of staying in the air for 12 to 24 hours and hitting targets at a distance of up to 8 km.
In early April, the presidents of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan held talks, following which Erdogan said that cooperation between Ankara and Kiev in the field of the defense industry was not directed against third countries. Prior to that, Ukraine acquired UAV data from Turkey.
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