Bayraktar drone debut in Donbas draws Kremlin warning
A look back at 27 October 2021, when Moscow reacted to Ukraine's first combat use of a Turkish-made strike drone in the east.
What did Ukraine's first armed drone strikes in Donbas change on 27 October 2021? Within a day, they had drawn a public warning from the Kremlin.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on 27 October 2021 that the delivery of the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 and its first operational deployment in Donbas might "destabilize the situation" in the region. The remark followed the first combat use of the system in the area of the Joint Forces Operation on 26 October 2021.
The first strikes
On 26 October 2021, Ukraine confirmed that it had carried out its first drone strikes with the Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2. The strikes destroyed a pro-Russian separatist D-30 howitzer. The same day, a Ukrainian soldier was killed and another wounded by rebel artillery near Hranitne in Donetsk Oblast.
Drone warfare more broadly covers remotely piloted or autonomous systems used in combat, and by 2019 Ukraine was among the nations identified as operating armed unmanned aircraft. The Bayraktar deployment in Donbas nonetheless marked the first time this particular Turkish system was used in combat in the area.
Movement on the ground
Also on 27 October 2021, Donetsk People's Republic Foreign Minister Natalya Nikonorova said that Ukrainian troops had regained control of the village of Staromaryivka in the so-called grey zone between Ukraine and the Donetsk People's Republic.
Other news from the days around it
On 26 October 2021, the Amsterdam Court of Appeal ruled that the exhibits of the "Scythian gold" exhibition should be returned to the Ukrainian state.
Elsewhere in the region, Poland raised the number of soldiers on its border with Belarus from 6,000 to about 10,000 on 26 October 2021. The aim was to stop further illegal crossings by Middle Eastern migrants flown in by the Belarusian government. The increase followed an incident over the weekend in which a group of 70 migrants stormed a section of the border and two border guards were hospitalised.
The day's reporting thus linked a battlefield first with an immediate diplomatic response from Moscow, set against a wider run of regional tension.
