Russian missile experts flew to Iran around the time of Tehran’s attacks on Israel
Senior Russian officers have visited Iranian missile sites throughout the past year as military ties developed; unclear if they have specific expertise in nuclear weapons
Several senior Russian missile specialists have visited Iran over the past year as the Islamic Republic has deepened its defense cooperation with Moscow, a Reuters review of travel records and employment data indicates.
The seven weapons experts were booked to travel from Moscow to Tehran aboard two flights on April 24 and September 17 last year, according to documents detailing the two group bookings as well as the passenger manifest for the second flight. The flights came 10 days after Iran’s first-ever direct attack on Israel, and two weeks before the second and most recent attack, respectively.
The booking records include the men’s passport numbers, with six of the seven having the prefix “20.” That denotes a passport used for official state business, issued to government officials on foreign work trips and military personnel stationed abroad, according to an edict published by the Russian government and a document on the Russian foreign ministry’s website.
Reuters was unable to determine what the seven were doing in Iran.
A senior Iranian defense ministry official said Russian missile experts had made multiple visits to Iranian missile production sites last year, including two underground facilities, with some of the visits taking place in September. The official, who requested anonymity to discuss security matters, didn’t identify the sites.
A Western defense official, who monitors Iran’s defense cooperation with Russia and also requested anonymity, said an unspecified number of Russian missile experts visited an Iranian missile base about 15 kilometers (9 miles) west of the port of Amirabad on Iran’s Caspian Sea coast in September.
Reuters couldn’t establish if the visitors referred to by the officials included the Russians on the two flights.
The seven Russians identified by Reuters all have senior military backgrounds, with two ranked colonel and two lieutenant colonel, according to a review of Russian databases containing information about citizens’ jobs or places of work, including tax, phone, and vehicle records.
Two are experts in air-defense missile systems, three specialize in artillery and rocketry, while one has a background in advanced weapons development and another has worked at a missile-testing range, the records showed. Reuters was unable to establish whether all are still working in those roles as the employment data ranged from 2021 to 2024.
It was unclear if any had specific expertise on nuclear weapons. Iran, whose leaders are sworn to destroy Israel, has said it opposes nuclear weapons, but has since December increased by about a half its already sizable stockpile of 60%-enriched uranium, according to a report by the UN nuclear watchdog last week. The enrichment rate is far beyond what is necessary for a civilian nuclear program and a short step away from developing nuclear warheads.
The Russian experts’ flights to Tehran came at a precarious time for Iran, whose proxies — including Gaza’s Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis — have launched attacks on Israel since October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
Iran launched its first-ever direct attack on Israel in April 2024, firing some 300 attack drones and missiles in response to the killing of several Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members in an airstrike near Tehran’s consulate in Damascus.
Months later, in October, Iran launched some 200 ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for the killings of Hassan Nasrallah and Ismail Haniyeh, the leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas, respectively.
In both instances, the Iranian assaults were largely thwarted by Israel’s air defenses in cooperation with the US and its regional allies. Israel twice bombed Iran in response, the second time destroying much of its air defense systems as well as some rocket and drone manufacturing sites.
Reuters contacted all the experts by phone. Five of them denied they had been to Iran, denied they worked for the military, or both, while one declined to comment and one hung up.
Iran’s defense and foreign ministries declined to comment, as did the public relations office of the IRGC, an elite force that oversees Iran’s ballistic missile program.
The Russian defense ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Cooperation between the two countries, whose leaders signed a 20-year military pact in Moscow in January, has already influenced Russia’s war on Ukraine, with large numbers of Iranian-designed Shahed drones deployed on the battlefield.
Rockets and artillery
The flight booking information for the seven travelers was shown to Reuters by Hooshyaran-e Vatan, a group of activist hackers opposed to the Iranian government. The hackers said the seven were traveling with VIP status.
Reuters corroborated the information with the Russian passenger manifest for the September flight, which was provided by a source with access to Russian state databases. The news agency was unable to access a manifest for the earlier flight, so it couldn’t verify that the five Russian specialists booked on it actually made the trip.
Denis Kalko, 48, and Vadim Malov, 46, were among the five Russian weapons experts whose seats were booked as a group on the April flight, the records showed.
Kalko worked at the defense ministry’s Academy for Military Anti-Aircraft Defence, tax records for 2021 show. Malov worked for a military unit that trains anti-aircraft missile forces, according to car ownership records for 2024.
Andrei Gusev, 45, Alexander Antonov, 43, and Marat Khusainov, 54, were also booked on the April flight. Gusev is a lieutenant colonel who works as deputy head of the faculty of General Purpose Rockets and Artillery Munitions at the Russian defense ministry’s Penza Artillery Engineering Institute, according to a 2021 news item on the institute’s website. Antonov has worked at the Main Rocket and Artillery Directorate of the defense ministry, according to car registration records from 2024, while bank data shows Khusainov, a colonel, has worked at the Kapustin Yar missile-testing range.
One of the two passengers onboard the second flight to Tehran in September was Sergei Yurchenko, 46, who has also worked at the Rocket and Artillery Directorate, according to undated mobile phone records. His passport number had the prefix “22”; Reuters was unable to determine what that signified, though, according to the government edict on passports, it isn’t used for private citizens or diplomats.
The other passenger on the September flight was 46-year-old Oleg Fedosov. Residence records give his address as the office of the Directorate of Advanced Inter-Service Research and Special Projects. That is a branch of the defense ministry tasked with developing weapons systems of the future.
Fedosov had previously flown from Tehran to Moscow in October 2023, according to Russian border crossing records viewed by Reuters. On that occasion, as he did for the September 2024 flight, Fedosov used his passport reserved for official state business, the records showed.
