(By Massimiliano D'Elia) Tehran has sent its own consultants Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Crimea and Belarus to train Russians to fly Iranian-made drones. Russia has already employed Iranian suicide drones, the shahed-136, shahed-129 e Mohajer-6, against energy installations and civil buildings in Kiev. To date, attacks with missiles and drones have reduced Kiev's energy capacity to forty percent.
Iranian instructors, at this stage of the war, are helping the Russians improve their drone targeting capabilities to cause as much damage to strategic installations as possible. The Russian army, given the poor results on the ground, has decided to hit and destroy the energy infrastructures of Kiev to play the winter card, leaving the population of the Ukrainian capital in the cold and in the dark.
This is no small fact considering that the Ukrainian energy industry, under normal conditions, also supplied the EU with electricity. Since last October, Ukraine has stopped exporting electricity due to Russian missile attacks.
According to international observers, Iranian involvement will increase the intensity of the war by delaying the already difficult process of peace negotiations. The continued use of Iranian military advisers in support of the Russians will encourage the use of drones in a systematic and massive way thanks to the unlimited credit line agreed with the Iranian defense industries for the mass construction of the deadly RPAs - Remote Pilot Aircraft. Iran, for its part, is carrying out with the use of drones against Western air and missile defenses field test very important to refine the research and development of this formidable weapon, which proved to be fundamental for directing the continuation of the war in the direction desired by Moscow's strategy.
However, Iranian influence in Ukraine could lead Israel to break its neutrality. Tel Aviv could provide Ukraine with its state-of-the-art drone detection systems. Following this, the EU and the United States will also be forced to send anti-hydron weapons to try to stop the drones in Tehran.
However, this support could provide the Iranians with further "expertise”Against Israeli and Western antidron defenses more generally.
Kiev in the dark
Yesterday the mayor of the Ukrainian capital, Vitali Klitschko presented the worst case scenario: "Kiev risks a total blackout and citizens must "prepare for the worst, to face any situation". There may soon be no electricity, water or heating. The mayor then specified: “We are doing everything to avoid it. But let's be honest, our enemies are doing everything to keep the city without heating, without electricity, without water supply so we all die. And the future of the country and the future of each of us depends on how prepared we are to face the different situations ".
Kiev authorities, writes the NYT, have begun planning the evacuation of all three million civilians in the capital, in anticipation of a Blackout total.
The laborers are building, in record time, over a thousand shelters-bunkers equipped with heating, electricity and water while engineers are trying to repair the electrical infrastructure with the few remaining equipment.
"During the week, I had several meetings with government officials, representatives of energy companies, regional administrations on possible options to address the situation in the energy sector. We consider each scenario in detail and prepare appropriate actions ", said the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky in the course of his evening address.
The power outages, the president pointed out, continue in Kiev and in six regions. Without electricity, there are over 4,5 million people (over 3 million in Kiev and the capital region alone). "No matter what the terrorists want, no matter what they seek, we must go through this winter and be even stronger in the spring than we are now. To be even more ready for the liberation of our entire territory than now“, Zelensky thundered at the end of the speech.
"Let's be honest: Russia tries to commit an 'energy genocide', but Kiev and Ukraine will resist“He said in a tweet is Mykhailo Podolyak, the advisor to the Ukrainian president: "Simple protection plan: air defense, protection of infrastructure systems, optimization of consumption. The state effectively addresses these challenges. We work on the solution together with our partners".