If the Ukrainian account is correct, then the missile cruiser Moskva was hit and sunk by a land-launched Neptune cruise missile.

It remains unclear exactly how the Ukrainians managed to disable the anti-aircraft defenses of the Russian flagship in the Black Sea.

The Ukrainian side says that combat drones developed in Turkey also played a role in the alleged attack.

Rainer Herman

Editor in Politics.

  • Follow I follow

The TB2 UAVs may have transmitted the target coordinates, allowing a cruise missile to be launched undetected.

The warheads of the laser-guided missiles aboard the drones themselves would arguably be too small to cause serious damage to a missile cruiser unless they had extremely precisely hit and detonated the heavy warheads aboard the Moskva.

There was also speculation on Friday whether a shelling by several drones could have distracted the Moskva's missile defense system.

In the past few weeks, the Ukrainian army's Turkish TB2 drones had already destroyed Russian mobile Buk air defense systems and the tops of tank columns, slowing their advance.

A convoy of feared Chechen fighters, which was supposed to invade Kyiv on behalf of the Kremlin-allied Chechen ruler Ramazan Kadyrov, was apparently stopped thanks to drone attacks.

Drone acquisition was priority for Ukraine

The drones played a significant role in stopping the advance of the Russian army, says Turkish military expert and former officer Murat Aslan, who now works for the Seta think tank.

"Without them, the Ukrainian army might have already lost the war."

Turkish drones have proven effective against Russian weapons on several occasions.

In Libya, they eliminated the Russian Pantsir air defense system from Khalifa Haftar's rebel army and turned the war in favor of the government of national unity in Tripoli.

In the war of Azerbaijan against Armenia, they destroyed a large part of the Armenian artillery and numerous Pantsir or Buk air defense systems.

For the Ukrainian army, the acquisition of the drones was also a priority.

During his last visit to Kyiv before the start of the war on February 3, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan even signed an agreement with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to jointly produce the drone in Ukraine, which Turkey had previously only supplied.

Other agreements related to the joint production of propulsion systems for aviation and rocket technologies.

However, drones alone do not win a battle.

They must be integrated with the other combat systems.

Aslan describes them as a "multiplier of existing forces".

Hits by the drones give the ground forces the advantage of being able to immediately exploit weak points.

Once the Russian incursion began, it allowed Ukraine to buy time and eventually establish a strategic balance with Russian forces.

The success of the TB2 combat drone in use against conventional Russian weapons is based on two factors: The radar of Russian Pantsir systems can hardly detect the TB2 due to its small size and low noise level.

In addition, the drones are equipped with intelligent ammunition that uses lasers to find and hit targets.

A warship's radar decoy would be powerless against it.