Ukraine’s military claimed Tuesday for the first time that it encountered an Iranian-supplied suicide drone used by Russia on the battlefield, showing the deepening ties between Moscow and Tehran as the Islamic Republic’s tattered nuclear deal with world powers hangs in the balance.
The Ukrainian military’s Strategic Communications Directorate published images of the wreckage of the drone. It resembled a triangle, or delta-shaped, drone flown by Iran known as the Shahed 136, or “Witness” in Farsi.
The military official and the website both said Ukrainian troops encountered the drone near Kupiansk amid Kyiv’s offensive that has punched through Russian lines around Kharkiv on the eastern front.
The image suggested the Shahed drone had been shot down by Ukrainian forces and hadn’t detonated on impact as designed, though little other information was immediately released by Kyiv. An inscription on the drone identified it as an “M214 Gran-2,” which didn’t immediately correspond to known Russian weaponry.
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Iran has multiple version of the Shahed, which have overflown a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, been used by Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen, attacked oil depots in Saudi Arabia and allegedly killed two sailors aboard an oil tanker off Oman in 2021. The triangle-shaped Shahed is believed to have a range of around 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles), though Iran has offered few details.
Sources: abc News;