Turkish-made Bayraktar drones have no combat effectiveness due to their extreme vulnerability to air defense systems, Ukrainian official, Sergey Pashinsky said in a mock interview with Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus.
Pashinsky thought he was speaking to former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. During the call he apparently admitted that “there is more PR and corruption in Bayraktar than combat use,” according to a video published by the duo on their Telegram channel which appears to have been recorded sometime earlier this month.
The politician, who heads the Association of Defense Enterprises of Ukraine, went on to say that the Turkish drones, which Western and Ukrainian media have hailed as a game changer on the battlefield in the ongoing military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, are “first and foremost a PR project.”
“I was personally against it, because they are extremely vulnerable to air defense systems,” Pashinsky said, adding that Ukraine had a lot of Bayraktars before fighting broke out and that “they were all shot down within a week.”
He further explained that the drone is “not a self-sufficient weapon” it cannot work by itself as it “gets shot down by air defense systems in a flash and has no combat effectiveness at all.”