It’s like the scene in Naked Gun when Leslie Nielsen finds the world’s baddies secretly conspiring together before beating up the likes of Ayatollah Khomeini, Idi Amin and Mikhail Gorbachev (well it was before we all learnt to love him).
This time, in the 2022 real-life sequel, it’s Ayatollah Khamenei plotting with Vladimir Putin while Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un wait in the next door room seeing how it all works out. Mr Putin’s Ukraine venture is not going well so the ayatollah offers drones to help.
So early this morning one ostracised dictatorship was using the weapons of another to bring terror to the innocent civilians of a European democracy.
‘Kamikaze drones’ pictured flying over Kyiv moments before hit – war updates
The videos show massive explosions in the midst of residential apartment blocks and people screaming.
The Russians have strangely renamed the Shahed 136 the Geranium 2. We’re not sure why except that the Iranians insist they are not supplying them so the Russians had to call them something else.
It doesn’t matter what they’re called if you are at the receiving end. The drone is what the military call a lurking munition. It flies around looking for a target for a while. On the ground, fear builds as civilians wonder where it will choose to come down. When it does, it causes a massive explosion and a mushroom cloud of dust and smoke.
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The videos from Kyiv this morning take you there. It must be terrifying.
They came down near apartment blocks but also power installations. Russia is either targeting people to instil fear or infrastructure or both. Both are war crimes unless there is a very good military reason to do so.
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Russia has a new man in charge in Ukraine. Nicknamed General Armageddon, General Sergei Surovikin looks like Dr Evil and looks like yet more bad news for Ukrainian civilians.
He was Russian commander in Syria while Russian forces bombed hospitals, clinics, homes and even a UN aid convoy, anything really that would demoralise and terrify the enemy, never mind the laws of war.
In doing so in Ukraine, he has a very effective tool in the Geranium 2 drone at his disposal.
It has been called a kamikaze drone. Forbes McKenzie, an intelligence analyst, says another Second World War weapon might be a better comparison.
‘”It is a weapon of terror, more like the V1 and V2 systems of WW2 designed to strike terror as they did in the frightening chapter at the end of that war.”
Hitler’s doodlebug rockets would also terrify people on the ground as they heard them buzz overhead and tried to work out what they were about to hit.
What’s in it for the Iranians? To some extent, it is a question of like-minded nations sticking together. They both resent the United States and believe in the need to challenge its hegemony. But there will be a quid pro quo too, likely to involve oil and trade.
Whatever the details, this is a sign of things to come in future warfare. Iran has taken downed American drones and reverse-engineered them. It is now playing the Great Satan at its own game by copying its own toys of war, vicariously though with no risk of loss of life on its side. What’s not for the ayatollahs to like?
NATO will give Ukraine the ability to counter their threat, say analysts, but for now they are causing merry hell in the skies over Kyiv and other cities.
One pariah state is helping another using the pirated technology of their common enemy in what is becoming the proxy war of all proxy wars and this alarming escalation won’t be the last.
