Russia is confident of securing up to 250 ballistic missiles from Iran as it runs short of its own explosives.
Vladimir Putin aims to use the deadly weaponry in a new burst of terror in Ukraine ‘early next year’.
Some 70 of the Iranian surface-to-surface missiles should arrive before the New Year as Ukraine rushes to obtain enhanced Western air defence systems.
Putin has begged Iranians for a larger missile supply, but sources claim he will not receive more than 250 from a Tehran regime preoccupied with protests.
Russia has been over-reliant on drone supplies from Iran amid shortages in its own stocks.
A top Russian official close to Putin has been in Tehran this week.
Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov, is said to have travelled there to share strategies for cracking down on dissenters and suppressing protests.
It is unclear if the crony's visit was also aimed at giving notional legal cover to military supplies of missiles and drones which would be in contravention of a 2015 UN Security Council resolution.
Krasnov’s visit follows a similar trip last month by Putin’s right hand man Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Kremlin’s security council.
A UN diplomat last week confirmed that Iranian weaponry had not been shipped but was ”clearly on the order books”.
Now Russian anti-Putin Telegram channel General SVR has claimed “even before the New Year, the Russian leadership will have at least 70 Iranian ballistic missiles at its disposal, and another 150 should be delivered in January.”
By mid-February, the total should be 250 “and this is the limit”.
Putin wants to use “the full potential of Iranian missiles for two massive missile strikes, with an interval of up to a day, against the critical…infrastructure of Ukraine”, claimed the channel.
This would be the first month or so of 2023 “in preparation for [an] offensive of Russian troops”.
This is seen by the Kremlin leadership as a “last chance” to influence the situation at the front, claimed the channel.
Ukrainian military expert Pavlo Narozhnyy warned this week that Ukraine has little or no protection against the Iranian missiles.
He urged major Western concessions to Iran to halt the missile supplies and said oil was its key advantage.
Narozhnyy said: "Iran's main trump card is oil supplies. Iran is currently under sanctions, it supplies oil only to rogue countries.
“If America allowed the supply of oil from Iran, this could be a trump card.
“That is, to allow Iran to supply oil in exchange for Iran breaking off its cooperation with Russia.
“Iran has been under sanctions for quite some time. Everything is bad in Iran. And there is nothing else to hit them with.”
