Ankara will provide Kiev with Turkish-made Bayraktar drones free of charge, enabling Lithuania to buy ammunition for the drones, Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvydas Anusauskas said on Thursday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd June, 2022) Ankara will provide Kiev with Turkish-made Bayraktar drones free of charge, enabling Lithuania to buy ammunition for the drones, Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvydas Anusauskas said on Thursday.
"It is UNBELIEVABLE but Turkey just agreed to give the Bayraktar that Lithuania gathered money for, !FOR FREE!. It is amazing! For the gathered money we will buy the needed ammunition for the Bayraktar and the rest of money will also go for support of Ukraine," Anusauskas tweeted.
In January, the CEO of the Baykar technology company, Haluk Bayraktar, announced concluding contracts to sell its Bayraktar TB2 unmanned combat aerial vehicles to 16 countries. Last September, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and the Turkish company signed a memorandum on the construction of a joint center for drone maintenance and modernization near Kiev.
In March, Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Yavuz Selim Kiran stated that Ankara had not donated its Bayraktar drones to Kiev as assistance, but rather that they had been sold to Ukraine by a private company.
On February 24, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine after the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk appealed for help in defending themselves against Ukrainian forces. In response, the United States and its allies launched comprehensive sanctions against Russia and boosted military assistance for Ukraine, including by supplying it with lethal weapons.
