Iranian military advisers, who were instructing Russian servicemen on how to use kamikaze drones Shahed-136, have been killed in Crimea, Ukraine’s Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council, Oleksiy Danilov, confirms to The Guardian in an interview.
Danilov does not clarify how many Iranian military instructors were killed.
At the end of October, The Jerusalem Post reported, citing a Ukrainian official, that ten Iranians, who had been overseeing the training of Russian soldiers on how to use Iranian drones, were killed in Crimea. The article was published after the US and Ukraine authorities had been vocal about Iranians training Russians on how to use Iranian UAVs in Crimea.
Last week, The Washington Post reported, citing Western security agencies, that Russia and Iran had signed a secret agreement, according to which Moscow would “begin manufacturing hundreds of unmanned weaponized aircraft on Russian soil”. The deal was finalised in Tehran at the beginning of November, and “the two countries are moving rapidly to transfer designs and key components that could allow production to begin within months”.
On 16 October, The Washington Post reported, citing its sources, that Iran had struck a deal with Russia on the supply of Fateh-110 and Zolfaghar ballistic missiles to Russia, along with dozens of Muhajer-6 drones and “a large number” of Shahed-136 kamikaze drones.
