The New York Times quoted US officials as saying that Iran has sent trainers from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to the Crimea, to help the Russian army solve problems with the squadron of drones it bought from Tehran, according to the newspaper.
The newspaper stated that the sources derived their information from secret US intelligence reports, noting that the Iranian trainers were working inside a Russian military base in Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, which is where the drones have been stationed since their arrival from Iran.
US officials told the newspaper that when Iran sent the first shipment of drones to Russia, some of them were disrupted due to the mistakes of the Russian operators, and there were also mechanical problems in some of the planes that reduced their effectiveness.
The New York Times said that the Iranian marches had become an important weapon for Russia, as it used it in the large-scale strikes that it carried out across Ukraine against the electricity and energy infrastructure, noting that the dispatch of Iranian trainers appears to coincide with the expansion of the use of this weapon.
However, Tehran has repeatedly rejected Western accusations of providing the Russian army with drones, and stressed that it is not a party to the ongoing war in Ukraine.