Ukraine 'Shoots Down' Iranian Drone Used By Russia In Battlefield

Ukraine's military said Tuesday for the first time that it downed an Iranian-supplied suicide drone used by Russia near Kupiansk amid Kyiv’s offensive through Russian lines in Kharkiv region.

The Ukrainian military’s Strategic Communications Directorate also published several images of the wreckage, which resembled a triangle, or delta-shaped drone flown by Iran known as the Shahed-136, a bomb-carrying drones or “loitering munitions” as experts call them. 

In August, US-based think tank Institute for the Study of War quoted advisor to the Ukrainian President’s Office, Oleksiy Arestovych, as saying that Iran handed over 46 drones to Russia and that the Ukrainian government has already noted the use of these drones in combat in Ukraine.

Late in August, Yuliya Leonidivna Klymenko, a member of the liberal party at the Ukrainian parliament, told Iran International that Russia was buying 100 more drones from Iran in addition to the ones it had already bought from the Islamic Republic.

US Defense Department spokesperson Todd Breasseale said August 30 that Russia has faced "numerous failures" with Iranian-made drones, adding that the United States assessed that Russia had received the delivery of Mohajer-6 and Shahed-series unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) over several days this month. 

On September 8, the United States imposed sanctions on an Iranian company for coordinating transport of Iranian drones to Russia as well as three companies involved in their production.