Russia responds to the use of attack UAVs near its borders

President Vladimir Putin said that one needs to analyze the situation with the emergence of unmanned aerial vehicles near the borders of Russia.

According to Putin, the Russian armed forces are capable of repelling the attacks of combat UAVs very effectively.

"We know very well how they [unmanned aircraft] have proven themselves in armed conflicts during the recent years, how effective and how dangerous they can be for us, bearing in mind what we saw in Syria — terrorist attacks with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles,” Putin said, adding that the Russian army currently has over 2,000 combat drones in service.

On October 26, the Ukrainian Armed Forces used the Turkish Bayraktar drone for the first time. The self-proclaimed People's Republic of Donetsk said that neither casualties nor damage to civilian objects were recorded. Russia called the situation in Donbass alarming. Later, adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine, Aleksei Arestovich, said that Kiev would continue using attack drones in Donbass in response to the violation of the ceasefire.

Meanwhile, Putin's official spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia was developing new drones and anti-UAV technologies. Journalist of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, Alexander Kots, assumed that Peskov's statement came as a warning to Ukraine.

Announcing Putin's meeting on defence, Peskov particularly noted that the meeting would be entirely devoted to unmanned aerial vehicles. During the meeting, Putin will talk about not only the development of new drones, but also about technologies for combating enemy drones, where Russia also has "very, very good experience and practices", Dmitry Peskov said.

The journalist assumed that such an announcement, made against the background of the first use of Bayraktar drones in Donbass, sounded like an official threat to Ukraine.