TEHRAN -- Iran on Friday asked its nationals to leave Ukraine and scrap their travel plans to the country, citing intensified military confrontations there.
Iran’s foreign ministry issued a statement, giving recommendations on travel to or stay in Ukraine by Iranian nationals.
“Given the intensification of military conflicts and insecurity in Ukraine, all Iranian nationals are strongly recommended to refrain from traveling to this country,” read the short statement.
The statement also recommended that Iranian nationals residing in Ukraine leave the country, noting that they can keep contact with the Iranian embassy in Kyiv.
The announcement comes as the Ukrainian military is ramping up an offensive towards the city of Kherson.
Amid the intense clashes, Western states are also accusing Iran of providing drones to Russia for the war in Ukraine.
Tehran has rejected the allegations as baseless. “The claim of Iran sending missiles to Russia for use against Ukraine is a baseless allegation. We have defense cooperation with Russia, but sending weapons and drones against Ukraine is not our policy,” Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian wrote on his Twitter account on Thursday.
Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations on Thursday refuted Ukraine’s allegation that the Islamic Republic violated a UN resolution by allegedly providing Russia with drones.
In a letter to UN chief Antonio Guterres and the world body’s Security Council, Amir-Saeid Iravani restrictions mentioned in the Annex B of the UN Security Council resolution had “ended in October 2020.”
“Since then, none of Iran’s actions towards provision, selling or transfer of weapons or related materials to other countries has been subject to the resolution,” he added.
Ukraine’s UN Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya had written to Guterres and Security Council members, alleging that the Islamic Republic had “violated” the Security Council Resolution 2231 by allegedly transferring unmanned aerial vehicles to Russia, which is conducting a military operation in the ex-Soviet republic.
Iravani condemned the Ukrainian official’s latter claim as “wrongful and arbitrary interpretation” of the resolution and Paragraph 4’s “spirit.”
The Islamic Republic “has neither provided, nor intends to provide

any foreign party with items, materials, equipment, commodities, and technology that contribute to development of nuclear weapons.”
Ukraine’s invitation of UN experts towards examination of Iran’s so-called violation of Resolution 2231 is, therefore, “lacking in all legal foundation within Resolution 2231’s framework,” the envoy added
The official called on the UN secretary-general to prevent any “misuse” of the resolution in relation to the war in Ukraine.
He finally called on the world body to confront such unfounded anti-Iranian allegations.
Using the unfounded allegations, the European Union and Britain imposed sanctions on Iran on Thursday over alleged drone delivery.
Russia’s foreign ministry said Thursday the West is seeking to put “pressure” on Tehran with accusations that Moscow is using Iran-made drones in Ukraine.
“Everything that is now being done on the Iranian track is subordinated to one goal - pressure on this country. And Washington is mobilizing NATO and EU countries for this in support of its position,” ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a press briefing.
The Kremlin says it has no knowledge of its army using Iranian drones in Ukraine and Tehran has said the claims that it is providing Russia with weapons are “baseless.”
Zakharova on Thursday dismissed the drone accusations as “rumors.”
“This is all nothing more than a set of unsubstantiated conclusions and far-fetched assumptions that Britain and France are trying to build into a structure and every time it collapses in front of everyone,” she added.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani called such allegations “unfounded,” which had been made on the basis of “misinformation and ill-intentioned presumptions.”
The anti-Iran claims first emerged in July, with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan alleging that Washington had received “information” indicating that the Islamic Republic was preparing to provide Russia with “up to several hundred drones, including weapons-capable UAVs on an expedited timeline” for use in the war in Ukraine.
This is while the United States and its European allies have since the onset of the conflict in Ukraine been providing Kyiv with an assortment of arms and weapons, fanning the flames of war in the ex-Soviet republic.