Tehran regrets Ukraine’s decision to sever diplomatic relations over reports of Iranian drone deliveries to Russia, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry said on Saturday, according to Reuters.

Nasser Kanaani said that Ukraine should “refrain from the influence of third parties who are trying to destroy relations between the two countries,” the ministry said in a statement.

Ukraine announced on Friday that it was severing diplomatic relations with Iran over Tehran’s decision to supply drones to Russian forces, which President Volodymyr Zelenskyi called “cooperation with evil”.

Despite images of Iranian-made drones posted on social media a few weeks ago, Kanaani claimed that Ukraine’s decision was based on “unconfirmed information and is the result of media exaggeration by some foreign parties.”

The fact that Tehran appears to deny that it gave the Russians the drones is all the more surprising, as US intelligence agencies warned back in July that Moscow would receive hundreds of drones, and satellite images were released as proof.

The military leadership of southern Ukraine announced on Saturday that they had shot down at least seven Iranian drones, including six Shahed-136 kamikaze vehicles, over the sea near the ports of Odesa and Pivdnyi.

Among them – for the first time in Ukraine – is a larger Iranian drone Mohajer-6, the military command in the south of the country reported.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyi, published a particularly harsh message to Tehran on Twitter on Saturday:

“Iran decided to support Russia by providing modern drones to the backward country to kill Ukrainians. After years of sanctions, isolation, and a terrible reputation, the Iranian elite still hasn’t figured out how to climb out of the basement of civilization.”