Tehran’s confessions on these drone deliveries in Moscow still mark the rapprochement between Russia and Iran started in recent months.
Le Monde with AFP
This is the first time that Tehran has reported the delivery of drones to Moscow, Iran limiting itself in recent weeks to deny these claims. Tehran admitted, Saturday, November 5, having provided drones to Russia, before the invasion of Ukraine at the end of February, confirming accusations of kyiv against Moscow, suspected of using Iranian drones for his attacks on civilians and infrastructure.
“We provided Russia a limited number of drones, months before the war in Ukraine,” Iranian Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, announced on Saturday quoted by the official agency Irna .
“Even by doing this confession, they lied,” Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, reacted, accusing Iranian leaders of minimizing the number of drones delivered. “We slaughter at least ten Iranian drones every day, and the Iranian regime affirms that it would have given little, and even before the start of the large -scale invasion” of Ukraine by Russia, denounced Mr. Zelensky .
“Yesterday, in one day alone, 11 Shahed were destroyed. We know for sure that Iranian instructors have taught Russian terrorists to use drones, and Tehran in general keeps silence on this subject”, he added. kyiv had already said several days ago that “about four hundred Iranian drones” had already been used against the Ukrainian population and that Moscow had ordered about two thousand.
rapprochement between Russia and Iran
For the Ukrainian president, “if Iran continues to lie about obvious things, that means that the world will make even more effort to investigate terrorist cooperation between Russian and Iranian regimes and what Russia pays in Iran for such cooperation “. “Only one of the terrorists or their accomplices remains unpunished, it will not exist in the modern world,” concluded Mr. Zelensky.
“Tehran must realize that the consequences of complicity in the crimes (…) of Russia against Ukraine will be much more important than the benefit of the support of Russia,” said the spokesman for the spokesman Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Oleg Nikolenko.
The head of Iranian diplomacy said he was ready to examine any “proof” from kyiv of an appeal to Iranian drones in the conflict. The confessions of Tehran on these drone deliveries in Moscow still mark the rapprochement between Russia and Iran started in recent months while Ukraine widely supported by the United States and the European Union, and that the China stands out from any direct involvement in war.
Iran, however, denied having supplied missiles to Russia, judging these accusations “completely false”. Press articles reported in recent days of potential deliveries of Iranian soil-to-ground missiles to Russia. Despite Tehran’s denials in recent weeks, the EU and the United Kingdom had announced new sanctions targeting three Iranian generals and an armament company “responsible for providing Russia with sugar drones” to bomb Ukraine. In September, kyiv had decided to considerably reduce his diplomatic relations with Tehran.