Last July, US intelligence warned of Tehran's plans to send hundreds of bomb-laden drones to Russia to assist in its military operation in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian army announced for the first time today, Tuesday, that it encountered an Iranian drone used by Russia on the battlefield, indicating the depth of relations between Moscow and Tehran at a time when the nuclear agreement concluded by Iran with world powers is at stake.
Last July, US intelligence warned of Tehran's plans to send hundreds of drones loaded with bombs to Russia to help it in its military operation in Ukraine. Although Iran initially denied this, the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards recently boasted of arming the global superpower.
The military official and the website said Ukrainian forces faced the drone near Kobyansk amid the Kyiv offensive that broke through Russian lines around Kharkiv on the Eastern Front.
The image indicates that Ukrainian forces brought down the drone without exploding when it fell, as it was designed, although Kyiv immediately withheld releasing any other information. The inscription on the drone indicated that it was an "M214 Jeeran-2" model, whose image does not correspond to any known Russian weapons.
The "Shahid" drone was designed as a triangle with a range of about 2,000 km, although Iran has announced few details about it.
Experts point out that these drones carry bombs described as "loitering munitions." The drone flies to a potentially programmed destination ahead of its flight and either explodes in the air.
The rapprochement of Iran and Russia comes at a time when Tehran faces crushing sanctions due to the collapse of the nuclear agreement in 2018 after the US withdrawal from it. Negotiations on reviving the deal, which saw restrictions on Iran's enrichment of uranium in exchange for lifting sanctions, have again reached a dead end.
Relations between Ukraine and Iran are also strained due to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards shooting down a Ukrainian passenger plane in 2020, killing all 176 people on board.