NATO will deliver air defense systems to Ukraine in the coming days to help the country defend itself against drones, including Iranian drones, that Russia uses to target critical infrastructure, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday, Reuters reported.

Ukraine said drone “swarms” had destroyed nearly a third of its power plants in the past week, as Russia stepped up its attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure far from the front line after suffering a series of military setbacks against Ukrainian forces.

At a security conference in Berlin, NATO Director General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday that the response to these attacks is for allies to increase supplies of air defense systems to Ukraine.

“The most important thing we can do is to fulfill what the allies promised, to strengthen and put more air defense systems,” he said.

“In the coming days, NATO will deploy anti-drone systems to counter the very threat of these drones, including from Iran,” Stoltenberg said.

The Kremlin says they do not know whether the Russian military is using Iranian drones in Ukraine

On Tuesday, the Kremlin said it had “no information” about the use of Iranian-made drones in a “special military operation” against Ukraine.

The comments came from Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, after he was asked at a daily news conference about reports that the Russian armed forces used drones obtained from Iran in attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities on Monday.

Kremlin-accredited journalists directly asked Peskov whether Russia was buying drones from Iran.

“No, we do not have such information. Russian equipment is used, you know that, with Russian names. All other questions can be addressed to the Ministry of Defense,” Peskov replied.

Iran’s Shahed 136 drones are called “Herad-2” by the Russian Armed Forces.

Under pressure from journalists in Moscow, Peskov again replied that “no, we do not have such information.”

On Monday, Iran again denied that it had supplied drones to the Russian military, despite numerous photos and videos documenting their use by Russia in the war in Ukraine.

• Read also: We did not give Russia military drones, Iran calmly claims

Since the summer, the United States has warned that Moscow has requested hundreds of military drones from Iran for use in Ukraine.

Tehran assured that it would not sell military UAVs to Moscow, but literally a day later, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan presented satellite images showing Iranian drones being inspected by a Russian delegation on June 8.

At the end of August, an official representative of the Washington administration said that these drones of the Mohajer-6 and Shahed series had already arrived in Russia.

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