Russia has ‘restocked supply of Iranian-made suicide drones’ as it unleashes fresh wave: reports
- Russian and Ukrainian sources reported that Shahed-136 drones had been used in fresh attacks on Kyiv and other locations in Ukraine
- The United Nations is looking into accusations that Iran supplied Russia with drones, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said this week
Russia appears to have used deadly Iranian-made drones to strike Ukraine after a three-week hiatus, suggesting it has restocked its supply and resolved previous issues that stopped them from working in cold weather, reports say.
Ukrainian news agency UNIAN and the UK’s defence ministry said the drones had not been used in Ukraine since November 17, the first day that it snowed in the country this year.
Reports suggested that Russia appeared to be running out of its supply of the deadly drones.
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Yevgeny Silkin, a top Ukrainian military official, also recently said that Russia was having problems using the drones because they are made of plastic and other materials that are not resistant to frost.
However, Ukrainian Air Force Command spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat suggested on Wednesday that Russia had resolved the issue and had started using the drones again, as did Ukrainian Southern Command Spokesperson Natalia Humenyuk, according to a report from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
Russian and Ukrainian sources reported that Shahed-136 drones had been used in fresh attacks on Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Zhytomyr, and Zaporizhia Oblasts, the ISW report said.
Ukrainian authorities said that Kamikaze drone strikes on Odesa left the city without power on Saturday.