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Israel’s strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities have alarmed none more than Russia, the country that first brought nuclear power to Iran in defiance of Western objections.

We’re “millimeters from catastrophe,” said Kremlin spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on June 18 in response to a bombing campaign that Israel launched against Iran on June 13.

Decades of conflict with the West have united Iran and Russia, despite a cultural gulf between the two nations that dwarfs the Caspian Sea that physically divides them.

Russia has spent the past decade backing Iran-aligned regimes and militia groups throughout the Middle East. Most famous is Bashar al-Assad, a longtime dictator in Syria, on whose behalf Russia began actively fighting against rebels back in 2015. Assad fell in December.

“We’re dealing with the domino effects of those changes,” Anna Borshchevskaya, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute focusing on Russia’s policy toward the Middle East, told the Kyiv Independent.

“In my view, the Russians were not just mere opportunists. They weren’t just hedging their bets. They weren’t just watching on the sidelines. They were actively fueling chaos across the Middle East.”

“Of course, they’ve (Iran and Russia) had such extensive nuclear cooperation because it was Russia that built the Bushehr nuclear reactor in the first place.”

In addition to a broad sense of being at war with the West, nuclear energy is a rare concrete tie joining Russia and Iran, alongside the arms trade and a shared interest in dodging sanctions on fossil fuels. Strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities are, for Russia, personal.

“Of course, they’ve had such extensive nuclear cooperation because it was Russia that built the Bushehr nuclear reactor in the first place,” said Borshchevskaya.

Opened in 2007 and providing power by 2010, Bushehr is to date the only functioning nuclear power plant in Iran. Originally a project by German company Siemens, construction was on hold for decades following the toppling of the Shah in 1979. Built and maintained by Russia, it was the first nuclear reactor in the Middle East.

The Bushehr nuclear power plant is seen in a coastal village in Bushehr province, Iran, on April 29, 2024. (Morteza Nikoubazl / NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) meets with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian (R) on Jan. 17, 2025. (Kremlin Press Office / Handout / Anadolu via Getty Images)

On June 19, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he had agreed with Israel as to the safety of the “over 200” specialists working at Bushehr on behalf of the Russian nuclear agency Rosatom.

The same day, Rosatom Head Aleksei Likhachov said at a conference in St. Petersburg that the agency had evacuated “tens” of their employees from Bushehr and were weighing a full evacuation, Russian news outlet Interfax reported.

Bushehr has yet to fall under Israeli strikes, at least in part because that would be a nuclear disaster.

The West stonewalled the Bushehr plant that Russia ultimately built out of concern that at least expertise, if not materials, would be redirected to Iranian nuclear weaponry. But Russia wanted a sale. Experts note that the uranium that Iran uses at its enrichment sites is separate from Bushehr, where Russia holds a monopoly.

But why Iran would pay Russia to build Bushehr and supply all of its uranium, as it does to this day, is an odd arrangement given that the oil and gas-rich Iran has little real need for nuclear energy.

“It is dubious to say that the reason why (Iran) did so is because they were absolutely desperate for having a nuclear power program. It is my belief that they did it to have a weapons program,” Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s energy program and former U.S. President Joe Biden’s special envoy to Iran said to the Kyiv Independent.

John Erath, senior policy director for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, echoed the sentiment.

“There was some question as to why they would build a nuclear power plant at great expense when they had no room for energy. I think the motives were pretty clear: Iran wanted experience with the technologies. They wanted to develop greater technical expertise and manage nuclear materials,” Erath told the Kyiv Independent. He maintained, however, that “Bushehr doesn’t have a role in the weapons program.”

Bushehr is the primary site of Russia’s nuclear engagement with Iran. But as a result of its ties as well as its position on the UN Security Council, Russia became a primary broker of the Barack Obama administration’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, colloquially the Iran nuclear deal.

The nuclear enrichment site that Israel is asking for U.S. aid in blowing up is Fordow, built under the mountains outside the city of Qom.

Nephew reminds that per the JCPOA, Russia was supposed to convert the Fordow plant from an enrichment facility to a “stable isotope separation plant.”

Experts interviewed by the Kyiv Independent all maintained that Russia was to all appearances a fair broker of the JCPOA in Iran. But it illustrates the resilience of Russia’s nuclear soft power and hard economics.

Kazakhstan is by far the largest source of uranium in the world. Russia, in turn, remains the largest seller of enriched uranium in the world, even as the European Union struggles to break free of energy dependence on Russian fossil fuels.

The equipment and even the fuel that goes into nuclear power plants are far less replaceable than oil and gas, providing an economic umbilical cord to Russia.

“Neither of them needs each other for the thing they primarily export, so it’s all secondary stuff, and that secondary stuff is nuclear and arms,“ said Nephew.

Iranian youth stand under an Iranian-made Shahed-136 unmanned aerial vehicle in Tehran, Iran, on Feb. 11, 2023. (Morteza Nikoubazl / NurPhoto / Getty Images)

One infamous example is Iran’s Shahed drones, which Russia began importing and firing at Ukraine near the end of 2022. Russia has since made more and more of its own copy, the Geran.

For Russia, nuclear generation and the prestige of being one of the few nations that can build nuclear reactors have been a rare source of geopolitical soft power, including the JCPOA.

Even U.S. President Donald Trump recently floated the idea of Russian President Vladimir Putin functioning as a mediator between Iran and Israel, which he subsequently backtracked.

Rosatom, Russia’s nuclear agency, announced the construction of another nuclear plant in Iran in 2019. And on June 9 of this year, news broke that Iran’s nuclear agency had inked a contract with Rosatom for eight more reactors, including four at Bashehr. On June 13, Israel’s strikes began.

Even without Israel attacking, experts were doubtful that Russia would build these new plants. Their announcement was, rather, a “symbolic” gesture of support.

“They want to show cooperation with Russia,” said Erath. “The nuclear power sector is something that’s important to the Russian government. It’s one of the areas that they export that has high value, that the Russians still are exporting, profiting from, when the rest of their economy is in big trouble.”

Note from the author:

Hi, this is Kollen, the author of the article. Thank you for reading. Russia’s entrenched activities in the Middle East have all too often gone overlooked, despite its longtime work arming militants and propping up anti-Western regimes. If you want more stories like this, consider joining our community today to help support our work.

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Key developments on June 20:

“All of Ukraine is ours” — Putin on Russia’s territorial ambitions in Ukraine

Ukraine, Russia carry out 2nd prisoner swap this week under Istanbul deal

“Massive” Russian drone attacks on residential buildings in Odesa kill 1, injure 14

Ukraine imposes new sanctions on Russian, Chinese, Belarusian companies involved in drone production

Russian President Vladimir Putin said “all of Ukraine” belonged to Russia in a speech on June 20 at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, amid increasingly aggressive official statements about Moscow’s final territorial ambitions in Ukraine.

Putin’s claim was based on the false narrative often pushed both by himself as leader and by Russian propaganda that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people.”

The narrative has long figured prominently in Putin’s rhetoric, often brought up as justification for its aggression in Ukraine.

In July 2021, just half a year before the full-scale invasion, the Russian leader stoked fears of a larger attack when he wrote and published an essay on the “historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians.”

In response to the speech in St Petersburg, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha condemned Putin’s comments as “cynical,” saying it showed “complete disregard for U.S. peace efforts.”

“While the United States and the rest of the world have called for an immediate end to the killing, Russia’s top war criminal discusses plans to seize more Ukrainian territory and kill more Ukrainians,” he wrote in a post on X.

Putin made several other statements at the forum, some contradictory, about Moscow’s aims in the war going forward.

“Wherever the foot of a Russian soldier steps is Russian land,” Putin said, directly implying Russia’s intention to continue occupying more than just the five Ukrainian regions that Moscow has illegally laid claim to: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts, as well as the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.

Sybiha said that “Russian soldier’s foot” brings only “death, destruction, and devastation.” He accused Putin of indifference toward his own troops, calling him “a mass murderer of his own people.”

“He already disposed one million Russian soldiers in a senseless bloodbath in Ukraine without achieving a single strategic goal. One million soldiers. Two million feet,” the minister said.

“And, while Putin is busy sending Russian feet to invade other countries, he is bringing Russians inside the country to their knees economically.”

As per the “peace memorandum” presented by the Russian delegation at the last round of peace talks in Istanbul on June 2, Moscow demands Kyiv recognize the oblasts as Russian and hand over all territory not yet controlled by Russian forces into occupation, including the regional capitals of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Asked whether Russia aimed to seize the regional center of Sumy in Ukraine’s northeast, Putin said that while such a mission has not been assigned, he wouldn’t rule it out.

Russian ground attacks into Sumy Oblast have intensified along the northeastern border in the past weeks, having first crossed the border after Ukraine’s withdrawal from most of its positions in Kursk Oblast in March.

Sybiha urged the West to ramp up military aid to Ukraine, tighten sanctions against Russia, designate Moscow a terrorist state, and “isolate it fully.”

“His cynical statements serve only one purpose: to divert public attention away from the complete failure of his quarter-century rule,” the minister added.

When asked if Moscow requires the complete capitulation of Kyiv and the Ukrainian leadership, Putin denied this, saying that Russia instead demands the “recognition of the realities on the ground.”

Ukraine, Russia carry out 2nd prisoner swap this week under Istanbul deal

Ukraine has brought home another group of prisoners of war released from Russian captivity, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on June 20, following another prisoner exchange a day earlier.

“Most of the warriors returning today from Russian captivity had been held for over two years. And now, at last, they are home,” Zelensky said on X, without revealing how many captives were exchanged.

Russia’s Defense Ministry also said that a group of Russian soldiers had been released by the Ukrainian side, without specifying the number of personnel involved.

This week’s exchanges follow four similar swaps carried out last week in accordance with Ukraine-Russia agreements reached at peace talks in Istanbul on June 2.

The latest swap was another in a series focusing on seriously ill and wounded prisoners, Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of the Prisoners of War (POW) said.

“These are defenders of Mariupol, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Kharkiv, and Chernihiv regions. Warriors of the Armed Forces, the National Guard, and the Border Guard Service,” Zelensky said.

The released POWs included privates and non-commissioned officers, some of whom were captured after the siege of Mariupol in 2022, according to the Coordination Headquarters. The oldest one is 60 years old, said Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets.

“Massive” Russian drone attacks on residential buildings in Odesa kill 1, injure 14

Russian forces struck residential buildings in Odesa overnight on June 20, killing a civilian and injuring at least 14 others, including three emergency workers, the Prosecutor General’s Office reported.

The attack, which the service described as “massive,” rang out around 1 a.m. local time. The attack drones struck over 10 targets, including seven residential buildings, and led to multiple large-scale fires.

At the site of one of the attacks, a 23-story residential building caught fire between the 18th and 20th floors, and led to the evacuation of over 600 people.

In a separate attack on a four-story building within the city, three firefighters were injured when structural elements collapsed on the responders. The building is described as being “completely engulfed in flames,” according to the State Emergency Service.

The aftermath of a Russian drone attack on a residential building in Odesa on June 20, 2025. The attacks on the city injured at least 13 people, including three firefighters. (Odesa Oblast Governor Oleh Kiper/Telegram)

The three injured firefighters are currently hospitalized in stable condition. Additional information on the attacks, as well as casualties, is being clarified as search efforts under rubble and debris continue.

In addition to the buildings, Odesa’s main train station also had infrastructure damaged as a result of the drone attack, Ukraine’s railway agency Ukrzaliznytsia reported.

Odesa, a port city on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast with a population of around 1 million, has been a frequent target of Russian attacks throughout the full-scale war.

“The overhead contact line and the rail and sleeper grid were affected,” the agency wrote in a statement, adding that no injuries had been reported.

Ukraine imposes new sanctions on Russian, Chinese, Belarusian companies involved in drone production

President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree on June 20, imposing sanctions on 56 individuals and 55 Russian, Chinese, and Belarusian companies involved in the production of Russian drones and sanctions circumvention.

Ukraine introduced new restrictions as Russia has escalated drone attacks against Ukrainian cities over the past weeks, launching record 400-500 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) per night.

Individuals and legal entities subject to Ukrainian sanctions cannot do business and trade in Ukraine, cannot withdraw their capital from the country. In the meantime, their assets are blocked, as well as their access to public and defense procurement, and entry into the territory of Ukraine, among other restrictions.

The new package of sanctions targets individuals and entities involved in the development and production of Russian drones such as Geran, Orlan-10, SuperCam, and first-person-view (FPV) drones, according to a decree published on the Presidential Office’s website.

The Belarusian Precision Electromechanics Plant and six Chinese enterprises located in Hong Kong and in the provinces of Shandong and Shenzhen are among the sanctioned entities.

The sanctions list includes equipment suppliers to Alabuga Machinery, a Russian manufacturer of machine tools and gears, and individuals who import components for the sanctioned Kronshtadt JSC, a drone producer that developed Banderol UAVs with jet engines.

Note from the author:

Ukraine War Latest is put together by the Kyiv Independent news desk team, who keep you informed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you value our work and want to ensure we have the resources to continue, join the Kyiv Independent community.

Skip next section Could the US and Israel attack Iran?

04/12/2025 April 12, 2025 Could the US and Israel attack Iran?

If a US-Iran deal falls through, Donald Trump has threatened “there will be a bombing” of Iran.

And ahead of the talks in Oman, the US clearly bolstered its military presence in the region.

It moved six of its most advanced bombers, the B-2, to the US-British military base of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean earlier this month.

Experts say the location put the bombers in an ideal position to operate in the Middle East. The B-2s are equipped to carry the heaviest US bombs as well as nuclear weapons.

In a display of its miliitary capabilities, the US has also sent a second aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group, to the Middle East.

Israeli media reported last week that the US had provided Israel with an additional Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, battery.

This is a high altitude system capable of intercepting missiles outside the atmosphere.

The move is widely seen as helping defend against possible Iranian ballistic missile attacks.

Israel could also launch strike

A military strike on Iran doesn’t necessarily have to be executed by the United States, it could also be launched by Israel.

Israel is now in a strong position to strike Iran, concludes a new analysis by the Atlantic Council .

This is because Hezbollah’s extremely weakened state “eliminates a major response option Iran had long counted on to deter an Israeli or US strike.”

“The most effective option may be a combined US-Israeli operation,” the analysis finds.

Six years after former President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, the disastrous consequences of this decision are still adding up.

In addition to Iran being closer than ever to a nuclear weapons capability, now we must consider how the declining security situation in the Middle East has raised the stakes significantly. Trump promised a “better deal” but instead we got an increasingly costly blunder that may be impossible to fix.

To fully understand the enormity of Trump’s decision to leave the Iran deal, consider this: When the U.S. and Iran were complying with the deal, it was estimated that it would take Iran about one year to produce enough fissile material (in this case, weapons grade uranium) for a nuclear bomb (known as the “breakout” time). The states negotiating with Iran (the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain, France, and Germany) assessed that this would be enough time to respond to possible violations and prevent Iran from producing a bomb. Even if Iran were to acquire sufficient fissile material, it could still take another year for Iran to make a deliverable nuclear weapon. As of May, 2018, the deal was working and considered (by most) to be a great success.

Then President Trump unilaterally left the deal, calling it a “horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made.” And now we are in a much worse place. Iran says it has no intent to produce nuclear weapons and U.S. intelligence sees no current efforts by Tehran to weaponize, yet Tehran is believed to be not one year but just weeks from being able to produce enough fissile material for a bomb if it chooses to do so.

At the same time, the ability of international inspectors to detect violations in a timely manner has eroded. As one U.S. official said of Iran, “they are dancing right up to the edge.”

Worse still, relations between the United States and Iran have been so damaged by Trump’s withdrawal that it does not appear as though the deal can be resurrected. Any efforts to stabilize the U.S.-Iran relationship have been severely complicated by the recent exchange of direct attacks between Israel and Iran. Just as we need a non-military approach more than ever, the prospects for a diplomatic solution appear distant. What’s worse is that increasing tensions may be pushing Tehran closer to a political decision to go nuclear. The danger of an Iranian bomb and the related risk that Israel could attack Iran’s nuclear sites could lead to wider military conflict in the region. Of course, it did not have to be this way. The deal was working until Trump abandoned it and, if he had not, it could still be working today.

How did we get here? To comply with the Iran deal , officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, Tehran agreed to significantly limit its nuclear program. Under the deal: Iran agreed to reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98% to 300kg and limit uranium enrichment to 3.67%, suitable for civilian nuclear power but well below highly enriched (20%) or weapons grade (90%). Those limits would have lasted for 15 years.

Tehran limited the number of uranium centrifuges in operation by two-thirds and committed not to build any new enrichment facilities for 15 years. The Fordow enrichment plant (designed as a secret, underground facility) was prohibited from enriching uranium, and limited enrichment could take place only at the Natanz facility.

Iran agreed to redesign another nuclear facility to produce much less plutonium and its spent fuel would be shipped out of country.

Iran agreed to provisionally implement additional safeguards under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). A year after President Trump’s withdrawal, Iran began to retaliate by incrementally breaching the terms of the deal. Tehran lifted the cap on its uranium stockpile, increased enrichment beyond the allowed 3.67% and resumed and expanded activity at prohibited nuclear facilities. Many of Iran’s advances were taken in response to provocative actions from the U.S. and Israel. In early 2020, the Trump administration killed Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and soon after Tehran announced that it would no longer abide by its enrichment commitments under the deal. But, even so, Tehran said it would return to compliance if the other parties did so and met their commitments on sanctions relief. In late 2020, Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated near Tehran, reportedly by Israel. Soon after, Iran’s Guardian Council approved a law to speed up the nuclear program by enriching uranium to 20%, increasing the rate of production, installing new centrifuges, suspending implementation of expanded safeguards agreements, and reducing monitoring and verification cooperation with the IAEA. The Agency has been unable to adequately monitor Iran’s nuclear activities under the deal since early 2021. Iran began enriching uranium to 20% in early 2021 at Fordow and then to 60% at Natanz a few months later after an act of sabotage damaged Natanz. Since then, Iran has been steadily increasing the rate of enriched uranium production. The latest IAEA report (February 2024) estimates Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile to stand at 5,525kg, more than 27 times the level permitted under the deal, with 833kg enriched to 20-60%.

How close to a bomb? Iran is steadily advancing its nuclear program, getting ever closer to becoming a “threshold state” with the ability to make a weapon while making no overt move to build one. The U.S. government estimated in March 2022 that Iran would need as little as one week to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear weapon, according to a State Department official. During a March 2023 congressional hearing, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley testified that Iran could produce this amount of enriched uranium “in approximately 10-15 days.” In its 2024 annual threat assessment, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence concluded that “Tehran has the infrastructure and experience to quickly produce weapons-grade uranium, if it chooses to do so.” And in March 2024, France, Germany, and the UK estimated that Iran had acquired enough highly enriched uranium that, if enriched further to 90%, would theoretically be enough for three nuclear explosive devices. There is greater uncertainty about how long it would take Iran to build a nuclear weapon once it has the required weapons-grade uranium. Such steps, referred to as “weaponization,” include producing uranium metal and shaping it into bomb parts, producing high explosives and electronics, and fitting it all into a device that could be used for a demonstration test. It would presumably take longer to produce a bomb that could be delivered by aircraft or a warhead small enough to fit onto a ballistic missile. According to official U.S. assessments, Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in late 2003 and has not resumed it. Reportedly, this program’s goal, according to U.S. officials and the IAEA, was to develop an implosion-style nuclear weapon for Iran’s Shahab-3 ballistic missile. A State Department official stated in April 2022 that Iran would need approximately one year to complete the necessary weaponization steps.