BRUSSELS: The European Union is seeking concrete evidence of any Iranian involvement in Russia’s war on Ukraine, the bloc’s top diplomat said on Monday.
Ukraine has reported a spate of Russian attacks with Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones in recent weeks. Iran denies supplying the drones to Russia, while the Kremlin has not commented.
“We will look for concrete evidence about the participation (of Iran in the Ukraine war),” Josep Borrell told reporters as he arrived for a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg, adding Ukraine’s Dmytro Kuleba would take part in the gathering.
The EU on Monday sanctioned Iran’s “morality” police, information minister and the cyber division of its Revolutionary Guards for the fatal beating in custody of Mahsa Amini and repression of subsequent protests.
The list, published in the bloc’s official administrative gazette, also blacklisted the chiefs of the so-called morality police, the Revolutionary Guard’s Basij paramilitary force, and a uniformed branch of the national police.
Denmark’s Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said the EU should react strongly to new air attacks on Kyiv where drones struck buildings near a central railway station during rush hours on Monday morning.
“What we can see now: Iranian drones are used apparently to attack in the middle of Kyiv, this is an atrocity,” Kofod said, saying the EU had to take “concrete steps” in response to that, as well as Tehran cracking down on protesters at home.
A woman was reportedly killed in the Russian drone attacks on Kyiv on Monday and one person was still trapped under the rubble, city mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
"Everything that is happening (here) is terrorism," he told reporters after residential buildings were hit during the drone strikes, which Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said also struck an energy facility.
