Ukraine confirms Iranian military advisers helping Russia have been killed in Crimea

Ukraine officials have confirmed that Iranian military advisers have been killed in Crimea, a news report has stated. The top security officials of Ukraine have also stated that any other Iranians on occupied Ukrainian territory in support of Moscow’s invasion would also be targeted.

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defence council, said Iranians were present in Crimea to help Russia pilot the Shahed-136 armed drones supplied by the Tehran government, but did not say how many Ukraine had killed.

In an interview in Kyiv, Mr Danilov said: “You shouldn’t be where you shouldn’t be.

“They were on our territory.

“We didn’t invite them here, and if they collaborate with terrorists and participate in the destruction of our nation we must kill them.”

According to the reports published in the Israeli press in October, 10 were killed because of Ukrainian military strikes in occupied Crimea.

Mr Danilov made it clear that any further Iranian military presence would be targeted.

The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Thursday sought to blame Ukraine, saying it could “end all possible suffering of the civilian population” if it met “the demands of the Russian side”.

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He added: “We are trying to answer this question and we’ll do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t happen.

“But if it does happen, it will tell us two things. First, that Russia has no capability of manufacturing their own missiles, at least in the numbers that would allow it to continue a large-scale war.

“Second, if a country that has been under sanctions since 1979 has a capability of producing such weapons, what kind of sanctions are we talking about?

“So it raises a big question about enforcement.”