Vladimir Putin gets Iran’s backing as US says Russia plans to annex more of Ukraine
- Russian president met Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran in the face of Western pressure over the war in Ukraine
- White House official said US intelligence suggests Russia is laying groundwork to annex Moscow-controlled Ukrainian territory
Russian President Vladimir Putin won staunch support from Iran for his country’s military campaign in Ukraine, with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei saying the West opposes an “independent and strong” Russia.
Khamenei said that if Russia hadn’t sent troops into Ukraine, it would have faced an attack from Nato later, a statement that echoed Putin’s own rhetoric and reflected increasingly close ties between Moscow and Tehran as they both face crippling Western sanctions.
Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on February 24 in what it calls a “special military operation” to ensure its own security. Nato allies have bolstered their military presence in Eastern Europe and provided Ukraine with weapons to help counter the Russian attack.
“If the road would have been open to Nato, it will not recognise any limit and boundary,” Khamenei told Putin on Tuesday. Had Moscow not acted first, he added, the Western alliance “would have waged a war” to return the Crimean Peninsula that Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014 back to Kyiv’s control.
In only his second trip abroad since Russia launched the military action in February, Putin conferred with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the conflict in Syria, and he used the trip to discuss a UN-backed proposal to resume exports of Ukrainian grain to ease the global food crisis.
The meeting with Erdogan was Putin’s first in-person meeting with a Nato leader since Russian troops invaded - and was a pointed message to the West about Russian plans to forge closer strategic ties with Iran, China and India to help offset Western sanctions.