At the same time, Ukrainian authorities published images of the wreckage of the first drones. Instead of Persian script, however, the wings bore the inscription ‘Geran-2’, prompting speculation that Russia might have been producing its own version under Iranian licence from an early stage.
During the war, the drones – originally manufactured in Iran – came to be referred to colloquially as ‘shahids’, a reference to the Arabic word for martyr that underscores their ‘suicidal’ mode of operation. Their sale to Russia was condemned by France and the United States as a breach of a 2015 United Nations Security Council resolution.
Although Russian officials have referred to the drones by the domestic name Geran since at least September 2022, they were at that stage most likely still Iranian-made systems.
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War and the Ukrainian National Resistance Center, described as a communications arm of the country’s special forces, have both reported that Iranian drone instructors were deployed to the front.
‘It should be noted that Iran officially denies supplying drones to the Russian Federation, which actively uses them in the war in attacks on Ukraine. However, as we can see, Iran is helping the aggressor not only with equipment but also with people,’ the centre added. According to Kyiv, advisers were killed in occupied Crimea in November.
Tehran subsequently supplied Moscow with Fateh and Zolfaghar ballistic missiles. The latter name corresponds to Zulfiqar, the sword associated with Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth caliph after the Prophet Muhammad. The Washington Post dated the first deliveries to October 2022.
Ukraine’s military intelligence service (HUR) later reported that, as part of deepening military co-operation, Iran was preparing to send Arash-2 drones, described as having one of the longest ranges in their class.
In November 2022, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian acknowledged that a ‘limited number’ of Shahed drones had been supplied to Russia before the war. He maintained, however, that the deliveries had taken place prior to the invasion and that no further transfers had occurred during the fighting.
The official statement was followed by reports alleging that Iranian drones contained US-made components. In August 2023, Ukraine submitted a report to the G7 detailing the findings. Washington subsequently imposed sanctions on the companies concerned.
In February 2023, Russia and Iran began converting facilities in the Yelabuga Special Economic Zone in the Republic of Tatarstan into a large-scale drone production centre. Students were later recruited to work at the site, where ‘Russian’ Geran-2 drones were already being assembled – a model Moscow publicly unveiled in August 2023.
As late as May 2023, the Shiite theocratic government in Tehran dismissed Ukrainian claims about the delivery of Shahed drones as ‘anti-Iranian propaganda’. Roughly 18 months later, however, the supplies were reportedly expanded to include short-range ballistic missiles.
It was against that backdrop that the then commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, declared in November 2023 that Kyiv was ‘fighting in World War III’ not only against Russia, but also against Iran, China and North Korea.
A new strategic axis
On 6 August 2024, Ukrainian forces broke through Russian defences in the north for the first time and crossed into Russian territory, entering the Kursk region, where they remained until March the following year.
President Vladimir Putin subsequently turned to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), which sent more than 11,000 troops to repel what Moscow described as an ‘invasion’.
In June 2024, the Kremlin concluded a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement with the Stalinist, nuclear-armed state, including a mutual defence clause. The accord was ratified by both sides in November.
The agreement between Moscow and Pyongyang was followed by a similar pact with Tehran. According to available information, however, it does not contain a defence clause. That appears to be borne out by the fact that Russia did not intervene on Iran’s behalf during the twelve-day war with Israel in June 2025.
With Iranian assistance in developing domestic production capacity, Russia was able to intensify its drone attacks on Ukraine, primarily targeting energy infrastructure. Although the strategy did not amount to conventional ‘starvation’ through the disruption of supply routes, it resembled an attempt to ‘freeze out’ the population, as Ukrainians lost electricity from their sockets, heat from their radiators and gas from their stoves.
When Putin replaced Sergei Shoigu as defence minister with the technocrat Andrei Belousov in May 2024, the new minister moved swiftly to live up to his reputation. He established the elite Rubicon drone unit, which, according to Ukrainian statements, became a real terror for Kyiv. He also altered Russia’s battlefield tactics, contributing to the capture of the city of Vuhledar in a single day.
In 2025 alone, Russian drone strikes caused damage amounting to one billion dollars in Ukraine, as then foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said. Separate Iranian deliveries reported by Bloomberg in January this year were allegedly worth ‘billions of dollars’, though they formed part of a contract dating back to October 2021.
China signalled its pro-Russian stance a month after the start of the war by declining to support a United Nations resolution condemning the invasion.
At the time, most members of the BRICS economic grouping – with the exception of Brazil – aligned themselves with Moscow. Israel also abstained. Then prime minister Naftali Bennett argued that such a position left open the possibility of mediating peace negotiations.
North Korea’s involvement
On the North Korean side, proposals to send troops to the Russian–Ukrainian front reportedly surfaced in the first half of the war. The defence analyst Igor Korotchenko was among the first to raise the idea on Russian state television, claiming that 100,000 volunteers were ready to fight against ‘Ukrainian fascism’.
Reports also suggested that North Korea had supplied Russia with artillery ammunition in quantities ultimately exceeding those provided by Europe to Ukraine. Such claims have not been confirmed by official sources. Ukrainian assessments, however, maintain that the volume dispatched by the DPRK surpassed European military aid to Kyiv.
What The New York Times described a year after the invasion as an ‘epochal conflict of superpowers’ appeared closer in October 2023, when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke openly of a ‘new strategic level of relations’ between Moscow and Pyongyang. By January the following year, the two sides were already ‘expanding co-operation’ at presidential and ministerial level.
In June 2024, after signing the strategic agreement, Kim Jong-un sent a substantial contingent of soldiers to the Donetsk region, officially to assist with reconstruction. Subsequent reports indicated that Moscow might deploy them directly in combat roles.
That is one reason why Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s military intelligence service HUR, described North Korea as the ‘greatest threat’ among Russia’s ad hoc allies. Zelenskyy echoed that assessment, again stressing that Pyongyang was supplying Moscow with weapons and troops. Ukrainian experts have spoken of figures as high as 100,000, echoing Korotchenko’s earlier claim, although there is no evidence that Russia deployed such numbers in practice.
Spillover into America
Although the deployment of North Korean soldiers was widely discussed – with their presence in Russia confirmed by General Vladimir Popov in October 2024 – the issue extends beyond personnel support for Moscow’s campaign in Ukraine. The DPRK’s entry into the European war reignited debate about the possible deployment of Western troops.
While European governments ruled out such a step in December 2024, discussion resumed a year later about the involvement of forces from outside the Alliance. The idea was criticised at the time by Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico.
In October 2022, Kim Jong-un’s regime unveiled the Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile, assessed as capable of reaching the United States. That development heightened concerns that one of Russia’s allies could become a pawn in a renewed confrontation between former Cold War adversaries.
Japan, which monitors developments on the Korean peninsula with concern, has repeatedly warned about the missile’s potential range. In March 2023, Pyongyang tested what it described as a new solid-fuel variant of the Hwasong-17 and signalled a willingness to supply such systems to Moscow.
Although Russia did not receive Iranian military personnel, apart from drone instructors, it secured support from Yemeni rebels of the Ansar Allah movement, commonly known as the Houthis, through Tehran.
Beyond Iran and North Korea, China’s assistance to Moscow has been described primarily as long-term supplies of dual-use goods with both military and civilian applications. It therefore came as a surprise when Ukrainian authorities released a video purporting to show a captured Chinese volunteer.
Shifting alliances
Against the backdrop of the Russian–Ukrainian war, we can observe the convergence of an unofficial anti-American alliance, which American foreign policy lobbyists refer to by the acronym CRINK – China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Until recently, Venezuela was also part of it as the westernmost member, but its president, Nicolás Maduro, was seized by US troops on 3 January on the orders of President Donald Trump.
Less than three months after taking office, Trump imposed strict ‘reciprocal’ tariffs on half the planet, prompting the European Union to seek alternative trading partners. The Commission has so far turned to South America and the Mercosur bloc, as well as to India and Australia. At the same time, Europe is negotiating labour migration with New Delhi while discussing food imports with Canberra.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, like most countries in the global South, distanced himself from both sides at the beginning of the European war, saying that it was not their business. The United States subsequently criticised him for buying Russian oil, which India only stopped purchasing after Trump imposed tariffs of 25 per cent.
Even America no longer enjoys the same level of trust in New Delhi, which is why Modi welcomed the agreement with the EU. The resulting world map may thus appear as a kind of Eurasia – Russia, Iran and China – alongside a broad neutral belt comprising Latin America, the European Union, India and Australia, and a West crowned by the American empire.
The moment one of the leading foreign policy think tanks in the US or Europe presents such a map as reflecting political reality, it would signal a profound shift from the order that has prevailed since the end of the Second World War.
