Field developments accelerated in Kherson, southern Ukraine, with the continued exchange of bombing between the Russian and Ukrainian armies, at a time when the Ukrainian president expressed his position on Iran's approval for the first time to provide Moscow with drones.

While Russian and Ukrainian forces exchanged heavy artillery shelling, Kyiv said its forces destroyed Russian positions in the eastern regions of Lugansk and Donetsk.

For its part, the Russian forces announced that they had shot down two "HIMARS" missiles, and repelled attacks in Kherson in the south and Donbas and Kharkiv in the east.

This coincides with the announcement by the pro-Russian authorities in Donetsk, that their forces are advancing on the axis of the strategic town of Mayorsk, one of the towns of what is known as the cordon in the Donbass region, and the intensification of battles in the cities of Bakhmut and Kherson.

On the other hand, the Ukrainian army said that its air defenses shot down two helicopters of the Russian forces in Kherson and 6 marches in the south of the country, as well as destroying 3 Russian ammunition depots in Pereslav and Kherson.


During the past few days, Kherson province has been in the headlines of battles after Ukrainian forces talked about continuous progress, while Russians talked about repelling all attacks.

The pro-Russian authorities had confirmed the evacuation of tens of thousands of Kherson residents in anticipation of an attack by Ukrainian forces to restore the city, which fell into the hands of the Russians at the beginning of the war that erupted on February 24, before Moscow announced the annexation of the province with 3 other provinces at the end of September. last September.

Zelensky's first review

In a related development, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Iran "lied even when it admitted that it provided drones to Russia," as he put it.

Commenting on the first Iranian acknowledgment of providing Russia with these marches, Zelensky added that his country's forces shoot down at least ten Iranian drones daily, while Tehran says that it provided a limited number of them before the war.

Zelensky justified his accusations that the number of drones downed by the Ukrainian Air Defense Force exceeded the number of "few" drones mentioned by Iran.

The Ukrainian president stressed that his country is certain that Iranian soldiers are training the Russians to use these planes.

Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko also warned Tehran of the consequences of its support for Moscow, adding in a statement that Tehran must realize that the consequences of complicity in Russian crimes of aggression against Ukraine will far outweigh the benefits of Russia's support, as he put it.

The Ukrainian spokesman said that the Iranian foreign minister "publicly admitted that his country was providing Russia with combat marches months before its invasion of Ukraine."

He added that the Foreign Ministry, in coordination with the relevant Ukrainian authorities, will continue to take the most strict measures to prevent Russia from using Iranian weapons for what he called the killing of Ukrainians and the destruction of vital Ukrainian facilities.

Iran acknowledged for the first time that it had supplied Moscow with drones, but said they were sent before the war in Ukraine, where Russia has used drones to target power stations and civilian infrastructure https://t.co/4Crmi5ZfdL pic.twitter. com/Cz0SBvX2QC

— Reuters (@Reuters) November 5, 2022

Delivered a limited number.

Earlier, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said that his country had delivered Russia a limited number of drones months before the start of the war in Ukraine.

The minister added that if Tehran was certain that Russia had used Iranian drones in the Ukraine war, it would have a reaction to this issue.

For his part, the spokesman for the Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Brigadier General Abolfazl Shakarji, said that his country had no role in the Ukraine war, explaining that the arms delivery to Russia was before its outbreak.

Shakarji described the accusations leveled at Iran by Washington and Kiev as false, stressing that they are baseless. He also made it clear that Western countries started the war in Ukraine and were providing it with all kinds of military devices.

According to the Ukrainian military, hundreds of Iranian Shahed-136 drones were shot down.

Zelensky also said that "11 (Shahid) marches were shot down yesterday alone."

Kyiv said about 400 Iranian drones had already been used against civilians in Ukraine, and that Moscow had ordered about 2,000 more.

On October 16, The Washington Post reported that Iran was preparing to send missiles to Russia.

In response, the European Union and the United Kingdom imposed sanctions on three Iranian generals and an arms company accused of providing Russia with drones.

And last September, Kyiv decided to significantly reduce diplomatic relations with Tehran over the issue.