Russia says it recently shot down 40 Turkish Bayraktar drones – although they have turned up only one as evidence – in Syria, while Francis Fukuyama, a leading American political scientist at Stanford, says the transfer of Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones to Ukraine could be a “game-changer.”
Which is it?
The Russians are placing their bets based on the Pantsir short-range and mobile air defense system that has seen action in Syria and Libya. The Turks and Fukuyama base their arguments on Bayraktar’s success in Nagorno-Karabakh, Libya and Syria – and more recently in the Ethiopian Tigray war.
But who is right? A lot depends on whether the Russians can actually deliver positive results thwarting drone attacks in the Donbass region in Ukraine. So far, there has been at least one successful Bayraktar attack.