Putin travels to Iran with a purchase of drones en la mira

DUBÁI.– El President Russo, Vladimir Putin will visit Tehran tomorrow to reunite with the leader supremo, el Ayatollah Ali Khameneien su primer viaje fuera de la antigua Soviet Unión desde la invasión de Ukraine.

La Casa Blanca informó en días previos que Russia is interested in buying drones from the Islamic Republic para reinforcer su propio arsenal, golpeado después de casi cinco meses de guerra.

In Tehran, Putin will also meet with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoganto discuss the resumption of grain exports by the Black Sea and conflict in Syria.

Putin considers that the West’s attempt to paralyze the Russian economy with the most severe sanctions in recent history is a declaration of economic war and says that Russia is moving away from the West and approaching China, India and Iran. Just three days after the President of the United States, Joe Bidenterminó una visita a Saudi Arabia, el líder ruso llega a Teherán para su quinta reunión con el líder supremo.

“The contact with Khamenei is very important”, said to the press in Moscow Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy advisor. “A dialogue of trust between them has been developed on the most important topics of the bilateral and international agenda”.

La Casa Blanca revealed last week Russia is seeking hundreds of armed and disarmed surveillance drones from Iran to use in the war in Ukraine, a reflection, according to experts, of Moscow’s need to fill a critical void in the battlefield and find a long-term provider of crucial combat technology. Funcionarios estadonicos dijeron que Irán se estaba preparando para proporcarir hasta 300 drones y que commensaría entrainar a las tropas rusas sobre cómo usarlos partir de este mes.

Russia has exhausted most of its precision-guided weapons, as well as many of the drones it has used to help long-range artillery attack targets in its months-long bombardment of Ukraine. Meanwhile, the first batches of multiple rocket launchers mounted on trucks from the United States have destroyed more than two dozen ammunition depots, air defense sites and Russian command posts, according to two US officials, which makes Moscow’s need to Contrarrestar las nuevas armas occidentales avanzadas sea más urgente.

Iran has provided drone technology Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthi rebels in Yemen and Shiite militias in Iraq.

A Russian delegation visited an airport in the center of Iran at least twice in the last five weeks examiner los drones que pueden armarse, said the White House in a communique. Los rusos revisaron los drones Shahed-191 y Shahed-129, according to satellite images that the White House provided with the statement a The New York Times.

Russia had its own arsenal of drones, but the possible delivery of hundreds of armed and disarmed Iranian drones would help the Kremlin. reponer una flota que ha sufrido grandes pérdidas durante la campaña, de casi cinco meses.

The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, refused to say if Moscow had any plans to buy Iranian drones.

Putin, 69 years old, ha realizado pocos viajes al extranjero In the last few years due to the pandemic of Covid and then to the crisis caused by the invasion of Ukraine, on the 24th of February. His last trip beyond the old Soviet Union was to China, in February.

Al visitar a la república islámica en su primer gran viaje al extranjero desde la guerra de Ukraina, Putin está enviando un claro mensaje a Occidente de que Rusia tratará de estrechar lazos con Irán, un enemigo de Estados Unidos desde la revolution de 1979.

Before the trip, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, said that Russia and Iran had been subject to Western sanctions for a long time: the price, he said, was from sovereignty.

For Tehran, tightening ties with Putin’s Russia is a form of balancing the influence of the United States and its alliances in the Gulf with Arab governments and Israel. Putin will meet with the Iranian president. Ebrahim Raisielegido el año pasado. “Necesitamos un allyado fuerte y Moscú es una superpotencia”dijo un alto funcionario iraní, que pidió no ser identificado.

Envalentonado por los altos precios del petroleum, Tehran is betting that with the support of Russia it can pressure Washington to offer concessions for the reactivation of the 2015 nuclear agreement. Even so, Russia’s inclination towards Beijing has significantly reduced Iran’s crude exports to China, a source of key revenue for Tehran since President Donald Trump reimposed sanctions in 2018.

Putin’s visit to Iran will coincide with Erdogan’s. Both leaders will meet in Tehran to discuss an agreement aimed at resuming grain exports from Ukraine by the Black Sea, and Erdogan’s threat to launch another operation in northern Syria that Moscow opposes. In Syria, Russia and Iran imposed their support for President Bashar al-Assad in front of the West, who repeatedly called for his overthrow since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

Agencia Reuters y The New York Times