Shahed 136<\/p>\n
The giveaway that the liberal-left leaning Guardian is acting as a mouthpiece for U.S. propaganda lies in the headlines\u2019 \u201ckilling civilians\u201d.<\/p>\n
The U.S. has a long history of using drones to strike civilians. Like the time in 2008 when it used drones to repeatedly bomb a wedding party<\/a> in Haska Meyna District of the eastern province of Nangarhar, Afghanistan.<\/p>\n The U.S. later admitted that the strike that killed 47 civilians was a mistake but at the time the Western MSM didn’t emphasize that the U.S. was targeting civilians. Although a wedding party should have been pretty obviously a civilian gathering.<\/p>\n In contrast, Moscow\u2019s strikes appeared to be aimed at civil infrastructure. That\u2019s not to defend Russia but despite the headline, civilians were not the primary objective. Ed.<\/p>\n Iran has significantly deepened its involvement in Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine by providing technical support for Russian pilots flying Iranian-made drones<\/a> to bomb civilian targets, the White House has confirmed.<\/p>\n The national security council lead spokesperson, John Kirby, said on Thursday that it was the US\u2019s understanding that the Iranian advisers were in Crimea to provide training and maintenance \u2013 but not to actually pilot the drones \u2013 after Russian forces experienced difficulties in operating the unmanned flying bombs.<\/p>\n \u201cThe information we have is that the Iranians have put trainers and tech support in Crimea, but it\u2019s the Russians who are doing the piloting,\u201d Kirby said. \u201cTehran is now directly engaged on the ground and through the provision of weapons \u2026 that are killing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure. These are systems that the Russian armed forces are not familiar using and these are organically manufactured Iranian UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles]. The Russians just don\u2019t have anything in their inventory.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere were operator and system failures early on. Either they weren\u2019t being piloted appropriately and properly and were failing to reach targets or the systems themselves were suffering failures and not performing to the standards that apparently the customers expected,\u201d Kirby added. \u201cSo the Iranians decided to move in some trainers and some technical support to help the Russians use them with better lethality.\u201d<\/p>\n Both the UK and the EU have announced sanctions on Iran<\/a> for its provision of Shahed-136 drones, a delta wing unmanned aircraft designed to fly into a target and explode on impact, which Russian forces have used extensively against Ukrainian cities.<\/p>\n Moscow has denied its use of the Iranian drones, but Tehran officials have confirmed it<\/a> and said they will also supply ballistic missiles to help replenished Russia\u2019s dwindling armoury.<\/p>\n The Iranian drones have played an important role in Vladimir Putin\u2019s effort to freeze Ukrainians into submission by targeting power plants and other energy infrastructure. Kyiv has introduced an emergency schedule of power cuts<\/a> to help stabilise the country\u2019s energy supply, which has been badly damaged by more than 300 Russian drone and missile attacks over the past 10 days as the weather turns cooler.<\/p>\n The country\u2019s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said people needed to be \u201cespecially conscious of electricity consumption\u201d from 7am and avoid using unnecessary appliances as he warned of local \u201cstabilisation blackouts\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n Three energy facilities were destroyed by Russia on Wednesday, the president said, with a further strike reported in the region of the southern city of Kryvyi Rih overnight amid growing official alarm over the impact of the Russian campaign.<\/p>\n In video remarks to an EU summit on Thursday, Zelenskiy said Russia hoped to provoke a new wave of migration to European countries. \u201cRussian terror against our energy facilities is aimed at creating as many problems with electricity and heat as possible for Ukraine<\/a> this autumn and winter, so that more Ukrainians go to European countries,\u201d he said.<\/p>\nIran provides \u2018technical support\u2019 for Russian drones killing civilians, says US<\/strong><\/h1>\n
Julian Borger \u2013 The Guardian Oct 20, 2022<\/strong><\/h2>\n