Iran admits sending Russia drones, insists before Ukraine war

Iran for the first time, has acknowledged that it delivered drones to Russia before to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, although it has argued that this was not the case.

Kiev and its Western allies have accused Russia of carrying out assaults in recent weeks using drones built in Iran.

Tehran has consistently refuted these allegations, although Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the foreign minister, was quoted as claiming on Saturday that drones had been transferred to Russia before the assault started in late February.

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“We supplied Russia with a limited number of drones months before the war in Ukraine,” Amir-Abdollahian said, according to Iran’s official news agency IRNA.

But he again denied Iran had supplied missiles to Russia, calling the accusations “completely false”.

Russian forces have been raining missiles and explosive drones on Ukraine’s infrastructure for weeks, as a significant Ukrainian military offensive fueled by Western weaponry supply has forced Russian troops back across large swaths of the nation.

Kiev claims around 400 Iranian drones have already been used against the civilian population of Ukraine and that Moscow has ordered around 2,000.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday accused Iranian officials of lying about its drone deliveries to Moscow.