Arms contract shows Iran has sold Russia ammunition for Ukraine war, says security source
A purported arms contract seen by Sky News offers the first hard evidence that Iran has sold ammunition to Russia for its war in Ukraine, an informed security source has claimed.
If authentic, the 16-page document, dated 14 September 2022, appears to be for samples of varying sizes of artillery, tank shells and rockets worth just over $1m (£800,000).
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It was shared by the source along with five pages of an allegedly linked contract that includes barrels of a T-72 tank and barrels of a Howitzer artillery piece, as well as ammunition shells. That deal was worth about $740,000 (£590,000).
Sky News has not been able to verify the authenticity of the documents independently.
However, the security source alleged: “This is a contract between the Iranians and the Russians regarding munitions… We believe it is 100% authentic.”
Russia‘s embassy and Iran‘s embassy to the UK respectively did not respond to a request for comment on the claims about an arms deal, nor on the authenticity of the documents.
Sky News showed the documents to Denys Shmyhal, Ukraine‘s prime minister, when he visited Britain in May and to the UK’s foreign secretary, James Cleverly.
Kyiv and London said they planned to investigate the authenticity of the material and would take action if it was found to be credible.
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Rocket launchers fire during Belarusian and Russian joint military drills. Pic: AP
“We suspected that there’s something like that happening,” Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, told Sky News in a recent interview.
“As soon as we verify it properly, we will be able to act upon this.”
Mr Cleverly, in a separate interview, said: “When information is presented to us, we will look to assess it and to validate it. And of course, we will make decisions based on that.”
He said the UK had already imposed sanctions on Tehran after the regime supplied attack drones to Russia, which have terrorised Ukrainian cities.
“Where we have evidence that Iran has provided military support to Russia in Russia’s attempted invasion of Ukraine we have taken action and we will, of course, always do likewise,” the foreign secretary said.
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The informed security source alleged the purported arms contract was evidence of this support extending to ammunition and other military equipment.
“It is our assessment that these were weapons ‘samples’ before further shipments,” the source claimed.
Russia’s war in Ukraine is draining stockpiles of ammunition on both sides.
Western allies are scrambling to keep arming Kyiv, while Moscow has put its defence industry on a war-footing.
But with the economic hit by sanctions, the Kremlin has also sought help from its friends.
Sky News has previously reported allegations that Iran supplied large quantities of bullets and ammunition to Russia via cargo ships on the Caspian Sea in January.
While it was not possible to verify the authenticity of the contract, Sky News showed the file to a number of experts. They said the content was “plausible” and the date – 14 September 2022 – matched with separate reporting about this kind of transaction allegedly taking place.
Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi during a meeting in Tehran in July 2022
Russia-Iran arms contracts make ‘perfect sense’
Jack Watling, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, who has spent a lot of time in Ukraine covering the war and is also an expert on Iran, said it would make “perfect sense” for Moscow and Tehran to agree contracts for arms sales.
“There was nothing in there that struck me as making it incredible,” Mr Watling said, referring to the documents.
“It seemed perfectly reasonable. The timing matched up with when we started to see certain transfers being made. And there were a lot of specific details, like, for example, the use of Swiss jurisdiction for arbitration in the case of a dispute between the parties that also looked quite credible in terms of previous Iranian practice.”
The purported contact
Headlined: “In the name of Allah”, the purported contact “for the delivery of ammunition” is allegedly between the Ministry of Defence and Logistics of the Armed Forces of Iran and Russia’s state military exporting and importing company, JSC Rosoboronexport.
The agreement is identified by this number: NoIR-RU-2022 6001/1/NoP/2236478020960.
The document is split into sections – each with a numbered article – like any normal contract.
The full price of the contract is $1,013,100
Key details are listed like payment for the samples of ammunition – $1,013,100 (£813,000).
The file is written in English, which is customary for contracts drawn up by Iran with other countries, according to the security source.
Transportation, spelt incorrectly, is plausible in legitimate arms contracts
It also contains a number of spelling mistakes, such as the sub-heading for article five, which reads: “Terms of delivery and transpotation (sic)”.
The security source said such typos were possible. This was an opinion shared by another expert who also viewed the files.
The International Commercial Terms
An internationally recognised set of regulations and terms that underpin trade deals, known as the INCOTERMS, or International Commercial Terms, are cited – making the covert sale of arms seem almost mundane.
One paragraph reads: “5.9 Right of ownership and risk of loss or damage of the subject of the contract shall be transferred from the supplier to the customer under terms and conditions of FOB/INCOTERMS 2010.”
This section on the transportation of the goods, also reveals the plan was to fly the ammunition samples to Russia from Iran.
They must be delivered within 10 working days after payment.
“5.13 The Customer shall review all the required permissions and execute all formalities to import the subject of the contract to the Russian Federation and receive all the permissions to accept air vessel at the Russian airport,” it said.
“5.14 The Supplier shall provide assistance to the customer in receiving of all other documents that could be required for customer’s air vessel flying out from shipment airport with cargo prohibited to be transported by air prior receipt of the necessary permissions and import of the subject of the contract to the Russian Federation territory and provide to the customer all the information about the subject of the contract necessary for customs clearance execution during import.”
Force majeure
Article seven of the contract talks about the impact of what is referred to as “force majeure” even though one party to the deal is already fighting a war and the other is known for arming and supporting militias across the Middle East. These facts are not mentioned.
The contract reads: “7.1 Inability of any party to comply with any of its liabilities under the contract shall not be considered a violation of the contract if this is caused by the circumstances of force majeure.
“7.2 The force majeure circumstances are understood to be the unforeseeable circumstances which are beyond the reasonable limits of control of each party and prevent the party from complying with its obligations.
“Such circumstances shall not be a result of errors or carelessness of the parties and shall include war, strikes, earthquake, convulsions of nature, lightning, hurricanes, floods, fires, epidemics, epizooties, quarantine inhibits, sabotages.”
Article eight sets out how the contract is governed by a private codification of international contract law known as the UNIDROIT Principles.
These principles are approved by an inter-governmental organisation called the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT), which has more than 60 member states, including Iran and Russia but also the UK, the US and other Western allies.
The contract says any dispute that cannot be settled amicably would be dealt with by Swiss arbitration in Zurich.
“8.3 If it is impossible to achieve a joint agreement within 90 days after one of the parties was notified by the other party in written [sic] about points of issue in accordance with this article and then all points of issue shall be settled under the Swiss Rules of International Arbitration Institution of the Swiss Chambers’ Arbitration Institution. Award of the arbitration is final and binding upon both parties.”
Intellectual is misspelt
Under article nine – “Assignment of rights and intellectual property” – the agreement discusses the protection of Iran’s intellectual property rights over its weapons.
“9.2 Customer shall observe supplier’s intellectual property and copyright during and after the contract for always. There for [sic] the customer is not allowed to produce, or reverse engineering [sic] of the same or similar or scale (up & down scale) for all the products and systems (subjected in article 2) during and after the contract for always.”
The signature page remains blank
Article 14 is for the signatures of the two parties.
It is blank on this page but signatures appear several times on a supplementary section that was also shared with Sky News.
Items and samples listed in Russian
A first annex to contract includes a table – entitled “TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS” – with items listed in Russian and large sample quantities.
They include 40,000 of 122mm high-explosive rounds, 14,000 of 152mm high-explosive rounds and 10,000 of 125mm high-explosive shells.
Table of the items being sold
Is Iran ‘ripping Putin off’?
However, a separate annex to the contract comprises another table of the same kind of ammunition.
It lists 10 different products – each one a varying size or specification of different ammunition rounds.
It also includes the price of each 100-piece batch.
The total – for just 1,000 rounds – adds up to $1,013,100.
Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former army officer, said he thought this was quite expensive if it was for such a relatively small quantity. “Let’s hope the Iranians are ripping [Vladimir] Putin off!” he said.
The contract includes an “end user certificate”. The name of the end user is left blank but it specifies the munitions must only be used “for the declared purposes and re-export or transfer them to third countries without written consent”.
These declared purposes are not mentioned.
The supplement contract
The supplement is from September 2022 but without a specific day mentioned.
It is described as a supplement to a contract numbered: NoIR-RU-2022 6001/1/N2P/2236478020959, which is dated 14 September 2020.
That is the same day as the contract Sky News has seen, which is marked as: NoIR-RU-2022 6001/1/N2P/2236478020960
The security source said it was thought a number of related contracts and supplementary sections were signed at around the same time by the two parties.
The first page of the supplement is marked with two signatures. Signatures also appear on subsequent pages.
Samples of ammunition and weapons worth $741,860
Contract shows Russia ‘running low’ on ammo
A table on page five of the supplementary section covers samples of ammunition and weapons worth $741,860 (£595,847).
This includes two 125mm barrels for the 2A46M gun of a T72 tank – each barrel priced at $85,750 – and two 122mm barrels for a D-30 Howitzer artillery piece – at a cost per barrel of $54,750.
The supplement also lists parts of ammunition to be sent, including 12 pieces respectively of the “shell body” and “brass case” of 122mm and 152mm ammunition.
The Ukrainian ambassador said the contract, if authentic, was evidence Russia is running low on war-fighting stocks.
Mr Prystaiko added: “That they’re actually talking about simple stuff like the armaments, like ammunition, this is showing that the Russian position is quite difficult indeed.”
A driver has knocked down several people on the French island of Ile d’Oleron.
Two people are in intensive care following the incident and a man has been arrested, French interior minister Laurent Nunez said.
Several others were injured after the motorist struck pedestrians and cyclists, he added.
Thibault Brechkoff, the mayor of Dolus-d’Oleron, told BFMTV the suspect shouted “Allahu Akbar” (Arabic for God is Greatest) when he was detained.
Arnaud Laraize, the public prosecutor in La Rochelle, told the Sud Ouest newspaper the 35-year-old suspect “resisted arrest” and was “subdued using a stun gun”.
He said the suspect was known for minor offences such as theft, adding he was not on a list of people considered a threat to national security.
Pedestrians and cyclists were hit on a road between Dolus d’Oleron and Saint-Pierre d’Oleron, he added.
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Police were alerted, with the first calls made at around 9am, according to French media reports.
Mr Nunez said in a post on X that he was heading to the scene at the request of the French prime minister.
At least 66 people have died after Typhoon Kalmaegi struck the Philippines, as footage emerges showing the scale of destruction.
A further 26 people have been reported missing, half of them in Cebu, where floods and mudslides killed at least 49 people, the Office of Civil Defence said.
Six crew members of a military helicopter were also killed when it crashed on the island of Mindanao, where it was carrying out a humanitarian disaster response mission, according to the military.
The powerful storm, locally named Tino, made landfall early on Tuesday and lashed the country with sustained winds of 87mph and gusts of up to 121mph.
Drone footage shows wrecked homes after heavy flooding in Cebu province. Pic: Reuters
Some communities have been wiped out. Pic: AP
‘State of calamity’ in Cebu
Several people were trapped on their roofs by floodwaters in the coastal town of Liloan in Cebu, said Gwendolyn Pang, secretary-general of the Philippine Red Cross.
She said in the city of Mandaune, also in Cebu, floodwaters were “up to the level of heads of people”, adding that several cars were submerged in floods or floated in another community in Cebu.
Cebu, a province of more than 2.4 million people, was still recovering from a 6.9 magnitude earthquake on 30 September, which left at least 79 people dead.
A state of calamity has been declared in the province to allow authorities to disburse emergency funds more rapidly.
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Entire towns flooded in the Philippines after typhoon
Damaged vehicles after flooding in Cebu City. Pic: AP
Pic: Reuters
Fierce winds either ripped off roofs or damaged around 300 mostly rural shanties on the island community of Homonhon in Eastern Samar, but there were no reported deaths or injuries, mayor Annaliza Gonzales Kwan said.
“There was no flooding at all, but just strong wind,” she said. “We’re okay. We’ll make this through. We’ve been through a lot, and bigger than this.”
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Hnndreds of thousands evacuated
Before Kalmaegi’s landfall, officials said more than 387,000 people had been evacuated to safer ground in eastern and central Philippine provinces.
The combination of Kalmaegi and a shear line brought heavy rains and strong winds across the Visayas and nearby areas, state weather agency PAGASA said.
A shear line is the boundary between two different air masses such as warm and cold air.
Pic: AP
A boy with a goldfish he caught after a nearby fish farm flooded. Pic: AP
Vietnam gears up for storm
The Vietnamese government has said it was preparing for the worst-case scenario as it braced for the impact of Kalmaegi.
The typhoon is forecast to reach Vietnam’s coasts on Friday morning. Several areas have already suffered heavy flooding over the last week, leaving at least 40 people.
Kalmaegi hit the Philippines as it continues to recover from several disasters, including earthquakes and severe weather over recent months.
Around 20 typhoons and storms hit the Philippines each year, and the country is also often struck by earthquakes and has more than a dozen active volcanoes.
“Follow me and be careful,” says the commander, as he leads us down a narrow path in the dead of night.
The overgrown tract had once been occupied by the Russians, and there are landmines scattered on the side of the path.
But the men with us are more concerned about the threat from above.
Members of a unit in Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade, they run a covert operation from an underground cellar, tucked behind a ruined farmhouse.
And what they are doing in this old vegetable store is pushing the boundaries of war.
“This is the interceptor called Sting,” says the commander, named Betsik, holding up a cylindrical device with four propellers.
“It’s an FPV [first-person view] quad, it’s very fast, it can go up to 280km. There’s 600 grams of explosive packed in the cap.”
The Sting interceptor drone used by the Ukrainians
However, he had not told us the most important thing about this bulbous drone.
“It can easily destroy a Shahed,” he says with determination.
Devastating and indiscriminate drone attacks
Once viewed as a low-cost curiosity, the Iranian-designed Shahed drone has turned into a collective menace.
As Russia’s principal long-range attack weapon, enemy forces have fired 44,228 Shaheds into Ukraine this year, with production expected to rise to 6,000 per month by early next year.
A Shahed-136 drone used by Russia amid its attack on Ukraine, on display in London. Pic: Reuters
The Russians are also changing the way they use them, launching vast, coordinated waves at individual cities.
The damage can be devastating and indiscriminate. This year, more 460 civilians have been killed by these so-called kamikaze weapons.
Russia’s strategy is straightforward. By firing hundreds of Shaheds on a single night, they aim to overload Ukraine’s air defences.
It is something Betsik reluctantly accepts.
Betsik observes the work of the team on in the cellar
Still, his unit has come up with a groundbreaking way to tackle it.
Perched in the centre of the vegetable store, we watch a youthful drone pilot and a couple of navigators staring at a bank of screens.
“Guys, there’s a Shahed 10km away from us. Can we fly there?” asks one of the navigators, called Kombucha.
He had just spotted a Shahed on the radar, but the enemy projectile was just out of reach.
“Well, actually 18 km – it’s too far,” Kombucha says.
“Do you know where it is going?” I ask.
“Yes, Izyum, the city. Flying over Izyum, I hope it won’t hit the city itself.”
Kombucha takes a deep breath.
“It is driving me nuts when you can see it moving, but you can’t do anything about it.”
The chase
The atmosphere soon changes.
“Let’s go. Help me lift the antenna.”
An engineer runs an interceptor drone up to the unit’s ad-hoc launch pad, located on a pile of flattened brick.
“The bomb is armed.”
The drone pilot, called Ptaha, tightens his grip on the controller and launches the Sting into the night sky.
Now, they hunt the Shahed down.
Their radar screen gives them an idea of where to look – but not a precise location.
“Target dropped altitude.”
“How much?”
“360 metres. You’re at 700.”
Instead, they analyse images produced by the interceptor’s thermal camera. The heat from the Shahed’s engine should generate a white spec, or dot, on the horizon. Still, it is never easy to find.
“Zoom out. Zoom out,” mutters Ptaha.
Then, a navigator code-named Magic thrusts his arm at the right-hand corner of the screen.
“There, there, there, b****!”
“I see it,” replies Ptaha.
The pilot manoeuvres the interceptor behind the Russian drone and works to decrease the distance between the two.
The chase is on. We watch as he steers the interceptor into the back of Shahed.
“We hit it,” he shouts.
“Did you detonate?”
“That was a Shahed, that was a Shahed, not a Gerbera.”
Going in for the kill
The Russians have developed a family of drones based on the Shahed, including a decoy called the Gerbera, which is designed to overwhelm Ukrainian defences.
However, the 3rd Brigade tells us these Gerberas are now routinely packed with explosives.
“I can see you’ve developed a particular technique to take them all down,” I suggest to Ptaha. “You circle around and try to catch them from behind?”
“Yes, because if you fly towards it head-on, due to the fact that the speed of the Shahed…”
The pilot breaks off.
“Guys, target 204 here.”
It’s clear that a major Russian bombardment is under way.
“About five to six km,” shouts Magic.
With another target to chase, the unit fires an interceptor into the sky.
Ptaha stares at the interceptor’s thermal camera screen.
The lives of countless Ukrainians depend on this 21-year-old.
“There, I see it. I see it. I see it.”
The team pursues their target before Ptaha goes in for the kill.
“There’s going to be a boom!” says Magic excitedly.
“Closing in.”
On the monitor, the live feed from the drone is replaced by a sea of fuzzy grey.
“Hit confirmed.”
“Motherf*****!”
‘In a few months it will be possible to destroy most of them’
The Russians would launch more than 500 drones that night.
Betsik and his men destroyed five with their Sting interceptors and the commander seemed thrilled with the result.
“I’d rate it five out of five. Nice. Five launches, five targets destroyed. One hundred percent efficiency. I like that.”
Maxim Zaychenko
Nevertheless, 71 long-range projectiles managed to slip through Ukraine’s air defences, despite efforts made to stop them.
The head of the air defence section in 3rd Brigade, Maxim Zaychenko, told us lessons were being learnt in this underground cellar that would have to be shared with the entire Ukrainian army.
“As the number of Shaheds has increased we’ve set ourselves the task of forming combat crews and acquiring the capabilities to intercept them… it’s a question of scaling combat crews with the right personnel and equipment along the whole contact line.”
Betsik speaks to Sky News
Buoyed by the night’s successes, Betsik was optimistic.
“In a few months, like three to five, it will be possible to destroy most of them,” he said.
“You really think that?” I replied.
“This is the future, I am not dreaming about it, I know it will be.”
Photography by Katy Scholes.
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