Russia denies Western intelligence reports saying it is sending drones to Iran

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Thursday denied reports that Russia has been sending military attack drones to Iran amid the ongoing war in the Middle East, dismissing them as media fabrications and urging people not to “pay attention to them”.

On Wednesday, the Financial Times reported that Western intelligence agencies had concluded that Russia was “close to completing” the phased shipment of drones, medicine and food to its close ally Iran, having agreed to provide all three after the Israeli and US airstrikes began earlier this month.

Russia is likely to be transferring its domestically made Geran-2 drones to Iran, which are themselves based on Iranian Shahed-136 drones, the FT said.

In January 2025, Vladimir Putin met with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in Moscow, where the two signed a bilateral deal boosting economic integration, energy cooperation, and investment in shared infrastructure interests in the Caspian Sea. However, the deal lacked the mutual defence clause that was set out in a similar deal signed by Russia and North Korea the previous year.

Russia was quick to condemn the initial US and Israeli strikes against Iran, and Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is thought to be undergoing treatment in a Moscow hospital for wounds he sustained in the Israeli strikes on his father’s residence in Tehran.

In early March, the Washington Post reported that Russia had shared intelligence about the location of US military assets in the region, including aircraft and warships, with Tehran. However, when asked about the report on 6 March, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth responded by saying that the Pentagon was “not concerned”.