Russia could deplete the reserves of Iranian drones, which are used to hit Ukraine, writes Bloomberg with reference to European officials.
One of the evidence of this is a significant reduction in attacks using drones in the last ten days. However, the pause may be due to the fact that Russia is accumulating reserves for future attacks, since most of the launched drones destroy Ukrainian air defense systems, the publication notes.
According to one of the sources of the agency, Moscow is constantly working to get new parties of drones and other weapons from Iran and other countries. At the same time, the countries of the G7 and the EU strive to disrupt deliveries, limiting Russia’s access to any Western components that can be used for military purposes.
Russia began to purchase Iranian drones for attacks on infrastructure facilities of Ukraine in August 2022. For the first batch of 160 drones of Shahed-136 and Mohajer-6 Moscow, Moscow paid Tehran 140 million euros in cash, sending money by plane, the British television channel Sky News reported. During the shelling of the infrastructure facilities of Ukraine, Russia masked the Iranian shoes-kamikadze Shahed-136 for its own drones of “Gerani-2”. Moscow denied the purchases of drones from Iran, but the Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic admitted that Tehran put a small number of drones to Russia. He claimed that Tehran did this a few months before the start of the war in Ukraine.