USA: Iranian military in Crimea helps drone operators

A small number of Iranian troops are in Russian-annexed Crimea, "directly participating" in organizing drone air strikes against Ukrainian civilian targets and infrastructure. This was stated on Thursday by the press secretary of the US National Security Council, John Kirby.

Iran has sent relatively few military experts to help the Russians launch military drones, Kirby said. The British government also announced that there are members of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Crimea who are helping to operate Iranian drones.

“According to the information we have, the Iranians have sent instructors and equipment maintenance specialists to Crimea, while the Russians are piloting the drones,” said John Kirby. He added that the Biden administration intends to impose new sanctions on Iran and find ways to make it more difficult to sell such weapons to Russia.

The need to send trainers was most likely caused by problems that became apparent after the first attempts to use Iranian drones to carry out air strikes on targets in Ukraine. According to American intelligence, when the Russians began operating them in August, they encountered equipment failures; the capabilities of the drones did not meet the specifications stated by the manufacturers. Most likely, the reason was the Russians’ lack of experience in operating these weapons.

The United States, Britain and France have said that Iran's supply of drones to Russia is in violation of a 2015 UN Security Council resolution, according to which Tehran committed not to export certain types of weapons in exchange for easing sanctions. The United States and allies intend to bring this issue to the UN Security Council for discussion. Moscow and Tehran insist that Russia does not import Iranian drones.