Iran has reportedly sent special personnel to the Crimean peninsula, illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, to help the Russian military overcome problems with a fleet of drones it bought from Tehran, current and former US officials told The New York Times, citing The Kyiv Independent.
The training is conducted by members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a unit of the Iranian army designated by the United States as a terrorist organization.
US President Donald Trump in 2019 designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, marking the first time the United States has classified the country’s armed forces as terrorist groups, Reuters and Agerpres reported.
“The IRGC (Iranian elite forces – ed.) is the primary means by which the Iranian government directs and implements its global terrorist campaign,” Trump said.
According to the New York Times, Iranian personnel are far from the front lines and are being sent to train the Russians to fly drones.
It is unclear how many instructors are currently in Crimea and whether they operate the drones themselves.
Iranian officials are denying reports that the country is sending weapons, including military drones, to Russia for the war in Ukraine, calling them “false,” according to CNN.
Iran “has always opposed the continuation of the war [din Ucraina]”, the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran, Nasser Kanaani, said, adding that Iran is ready to talk with Ukraine to resolve these accusations,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing two Iranian officials and two Iranian diplomats, that Iran had promised to supply Russia with surface-to-surface missiles as well as additional drones.
NATO will deliver anti-drone systems to Ukraine in the coming days
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.
“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.
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.
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 answered.
The Iranian Shahed 136 drones are called “Herad-2” by the Russian Armed Forces.
Under pressure from journalists in Moscow, Peskov replied again 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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Source: Hot News RU
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