Ukraine has reportedly purchased Korkut self-propelled anti-aircraft guns (SPAAGs) from Türkiye. Effectively a Turkish take on the classic German-made Gepard SPAAG, a mainstay of Ukraine's defense against Russian one-way attack (OWA) drones, the Korkuts could help stiffen Ukrainian air defenses as winter looms and Russia intensifies its terror attacks on Ukrainian cities and power plants.

The problem for Ukrainian air defenders is that the latest jet-propelled Russian drones, the Geran-4 and Geran-5, are getting through. They fly at around 500 km/h, nearly three times as fast as an older, propeller-driven Geran-2, and in September Ukraine shot down just 55% of them, by Zelenskyy's count, against at least 90% of the slow ones, one analyst calculated. The Korkuts arrive in that gap. Ground-based guns are arguably Ukraine's most cost-effective anti-drone weapons, but they may not work so well against the fastest drones.

That means more Russian munitions are getting through. More Ukrainian homes are burning. More power plants are going dark. It's a crisis now. It'll be an even greater crisis when winter arrives and the temperature drops.

All that is to say, the handful of Korkut systems Ukraine has received from Turkish firm Aselsan are welcome, but they're not silver bullets against Russian drones.

A Korkut battery includes a command vehicle plus three tracked or wheeled vehicles armed with pairs of fast-firing, radar-cued 35-mm autocannons. The exact variant Ukraine received hasn't been disclosed; Middle East Eye's mention of 25-mm ammunition suggests it may be the smaller Korkut 100/25, built mainly to stop frontline drones. The Ukrainian Korkuts join a sizeable fleet of SPAAGs in Ukrainian service, most notably including potentially 90 or more 1960s-vintage Gepards with twin radar-cued 35-mm guns.

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The tracked Gepards are old but effective. They, like all SPAAGs, can only engage incoming drones and other targets at fairly short range: just a few kilometers. But they're cheap. A SPAAG might fire a few hundred dollars' worth of shells to bring down a $50,000 Geran. A surface-to-air missile can hit a Geran from much farther away, but even the cheapest missiles cost tens of thousands of dollars apiece—and the supply is limited.

Gepards and other gun-based air defenses, along with wide-area strategic radio jamming, were the twin keys to Ukraine's temporary victory over Russian Gerans as recently as late last year. That's when the Russians were still mostly launching propeller-driven Gerans, and the Ukrainians were shooting down most of them.

Slipping interception rates

Vanquishing the slow Gerans didn't solve a separate air defense problem—how to shoot down supersonic ballistic missiles—but it did minimize Ukrainian casualties and mitigate the overall damage to Ukrainian infrastructure. Only the best, priciest, and rarest Ukrainian air defenses such as the Patriot and SAMP/T can hit incoming ballistic missiles. As missiles have run out for those batteries, more Russian ballistic missiles have gotten through.

But now more Gerans are getting through, too. On 26 September, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia had launched more than 2,730 jet-powered Gerans at Ukraine that month and that Ukrainian air defenses were shooting down 55% of them. Analyst and mapper Clément Molin set that against Air Force totals: of 5,437 drones launched between 1 and 26 September, the remaining 2,707 were slow Geran-2s and Gerbera decoys, and at least 90% of those were downed. The overall interception rate, he calculated, has fallen to close to 70%, from 86% to 90% earlier this year.

Ukrainian forces are scrambling to acquire more inexpensive surface-to-air missiles as well as faster interceptor drones. But they're racing against time and the growing preponderance of jet-propelled OWA drones. The Ukrainians' air defense problem may get worse before it gets better.

"Ballistic missile defense is a serious problem, but the increasing production of Geran-4, Geran-5, Banderol, and Filin jet-powered OWA drones/cheap cruise missiles will also be a growing challenge this fall and winter," Rob Lee, an analyst with the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, warned in August.

Winter weather reduces the effectiveness of interceptor drones and helicopters, Lee noted, and Ukraine will need more high-speed interceptors to counter the jet drones. "The interception rate for OWA drones will likely decrease."

But that doesn't mean the Korkut isn't helping forestall an even worse dip in the overall interception rate for incoming Russian drones. Ukrainian officials are reportedly pleased with the Turkish gun. "Korkut has been pretty much successful in countering the Russian attacks," a Ukrainian official told Middle East Eye. "There were of course some problems but nothing that couldn't be overcome through some small adjustments."

According to Middle East Eye, the Ukrainians are considering acquiring more Korkuts.

Russian nuclear giant Rosatom is negotiating the sale of a 49% stake in Turkey's Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant project, estimated at $25 billion, Bloomberg reported on July 1.

The project is a cornerstone of Russian-Turkish energy cooperation. The Akkuyu plant, located in Mersin Province, is poised to become Turkey's first nuclear power facility.

The 4.8-gigawatt project is expected to begin supplying electricity in 2026, Anton Dedusenko, chairman of the board at Rosatom's Turkish subsidiary, told Bloomberg.

"The closer we are to the first unit generating electricity, the more investors start coming," Dedusenko said on the sidelines of the Nuclear Power Plants Expo & Summit in Istanbul.

A previous sale attempt in 2018 collapsed over commercial disagreements. This time, financing is complicated by the threat of U.S. sanctions, prompting Moscow and Ankara to consider alternative payment mechanisms.

"There are many ways how to deliver money here. We can deliver the Russian rubles, the Turkish lira," Dedusenko said.

Despite its NATO membership, Turkey has maintained open diplomatic and economic ties with Russia throughout the full-scale war against Ukraine, while continuing to supply aid to Kyiv and host international mediation efforts.

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara is working to organize a meeting between President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin, with U.S. President Donald Trump potentially joining the talks, Reuters reported.

Speaking after his meeting with Trump, Erdogan said on June 26 that the U.S. president expressed interest in participating if the meeting were to take place in Turkey.

"He said,'If Russian President Vladimir Putin comes to Istanbul or Ankara for a solution, then I will also come,'" Erdogan told reporters. "We will hold the necessary contacts and, God willing, realize this meeting as soon as possible."

Zelensky and Trump met during the NATO summit on June 25, where the two leaders discussed battlefield developments, Kyiv's need for additional air defense systems, and the potential for co-production of drones.

Zelensky has previously voiced openness to a trilateral meeting. On May 27, he told public broadcaster Suspilne that he was ready to sit down with both Trump and Putin.

Putin has claimed he is also willing to meet, but did not attend previous talks proposed in Istanbul, opting instead to send lower-level delegates to peace discussions held on May 16.

The Kremlin has long sought to portray Zelensky as "illegitimate", with spokesperson Dmitry Peskov in February claiming that any talks must consider "legal aspects" of his mandate.

Turkey previously hosted direct peace talks in March 2022 and has remained one of the few countries with open lines to both Kyiv and Moscow. The latest round of direct talks on June 2 was held in Istanbul.

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THE HAGUE, Netherlands — As NATO leaders convened in The Hague for a two-day summit on June 24–25, allies and Kyiv braced for the first annual meeting since U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to office. With the Israel-Iranian conflict dominating the news and the summit agenda focused on

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