A video recently appeared on social media showing the Ukrainian military receiving weapons from Russia’s ally Iran, which supplied Moscow with military drones for its “special military operation.”

The recording of the Ukrainian military was shared by the administrators of the Ukraine Weapons Tracker page, who identified the projectiles in the pictures as 122-millimeter projectiles of Iranian production. They note that although some of the Iranian weapons have already been spotted in the arms of the Ukrainian military, the new video deserves attention.

Although the Ukrainian military has blacked out the origin of the shells in the footage they shot to show the “message” conveyed to the invading forces on the shell, it can still be identified as Iranian in origin thanks to a recorded delivery list. to the box, it is identical to that on ammunition boxes sent for export by Iran.

In addition, the box itself is very similar to those used in Iran for weapons.

Ukraine Weapons Tracker then goes on to explain why this video is great, although previously another footage from July showed Ukrainian soldiers using Iranian-made mortars: in the previous case, the weapons were believed to have come from Iran’s client groups, the most likely candidate being the Houthi rebels in Yemen, or that they were bought by Ukrainians from independent arms dealers after they were captured.

But the shells seen in the new footage were produced this year and there is no evidence that they were intercepted by third parties.

“Taking these things into account, we can say with great confidence that the munitions we see here were bought from Iran, possibly through a third party to be able to deny responsibility. But it is impossible to determine exactly who the buyer is from one video,” states Ukraine Weapons Tracker.

Notably, other photos and videos appeared on social media last month showing the Ukrainian military receiving anti-tank weapons from Jordan, another country considered close to Russia, as well as Pakistani-made 122mm shells believed to have been bought Great Britain, and then presented it to the Ukrainian army.

A video showing Kyiv’s military using Romanian-made Romarm munitions in 2022 also shows 122mm projectiles. However, the Romanian government denies that the shells in question came from Romania.

Iran, a duplicitous ally of Russia

The new video of Iranian ammunition received by Ukraine is all the more interesting because in its first reaction to the war in Ukraine, launched by Vladimir Putin on February 24, Tehran announced only a day later in the voice of its Foreign Minister Hossein Amir. – Abdollahian that “war is not a solution”, but that “the Ukrainian crisis has its roots in the challenges of NATO”.

Iran was also one of 38 countries that abstained on March 2 during a UN vote calling for an “immediate” end to the war in Ukraine. There were only 5 votes against, and the governments of Russia, Syria, North Korea, Eritrea and Belarus.

Tehran also abstained on March 24, when the UN again overwhelmingly adopted a resolution calling on Russia to stop its armed aggression against Ukraine.

On July 19, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Tehran in his first foreign visit since the start of the “special military operation” in late February, where the Kremlin leader met with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian officials.

Russia received military drones from the Iranians

Putin’s visit to Tehran comes a week after the United States said Russia had asked Iran for hundreds of military drones to use in its invasion of Ukraine.

Iran assured that it would not sell drones to Moscow, but literally a day later, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan presented satellite images showing how Iranian drones were inspected by a Russian delegation back on June 8.

In late August, a Washington administration official cited by Reuters said that those Mohajer-6 and Shahed series drones had already arrived in Russia, but that Moscow’s armed forces had “numerous failures” with them, despite Russian officials having been trained in Irani regarding their use.

Instead, Russia launched an Iranian remote sensing satellite on Aug. 9 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, a Russian space launch site located in southern Kazakhstan, according to a video posted on YouTube by Russia’s Roscosmos space agency.

Iran says the satellite is for scientific research, including radiation and environmental monitoring for agricultural purposes, rejecting allegations that it could be used by Moscow to boost its intelligence capabilities in Ukraine.

But in the context of the embargo imposed by the European Union on Russian oil, the Bloomberg agency wrote on August 25 that Tehran is already preparing to take Russia’s place as a supplier of oil to Europe if the negotiations on returning to the nuclear agreement are completed. in 2015 are successful.

Returning to the deal would lead to the lifting of devastating sanctions imposed on Iran by former US President Donald Trump’s administration after he pulled the US out of the deal in 2018, accusing Tehran of failing to comply with its terms.

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