Russia agreed to supply Iran with 90 helicopter-mounted launchers for precision-guided missiles, according to leaked Russian defence-industry documents reported by the Financial Times on Thursday, November 5 — evidence of a deepening military partnership between Moscow and Tehran that runs against Washington's public line that Russia is not helping Iran.

Source: Financial Times via The Guardian

The documents were obtained by Dallas Analytics, a Ukrainian private intelligence firm, and shared with the Financial Times and the Guardian. At their centre is a production schedule drawn up in May 2024 by Vympel, a major Russian missile designer inside the state-owned Tactical Missiles Corporation, listing an order for 90 APU-L twin-rail launchers under an export contract designated “K-10”. Separate internal paperwork explicitly identifies K-10 as Iran, and the codename is used for Iran by Rosoboronexport, Russia's state arms exporter.

Source: Dallas Analytics documents / The Guardian

90APU-L helicopter missile launchers ordered for Iran under contract K-10
14 kmMaximum range of the LMUR guided missile the launchers are built to fire (about 8.7 miles)
Late 2024–Dec 2025Delivery window in the Vympel production schedule
192APU-305 launchers listed in the same schedule for China

The missile the launchers are built for

The APU-L is designed to carry the LMUR — also known as Izdeliye 305, Product 305 or the Kh-39 — a precision-guided air-to-surface missile Russia has used extensively in Ukraine from its Ka-52M and Mi-28NM attack helicopters. The missile weighs about 105 kg with a 25 kg warhead, uses an electro-optical seeker with a thermal-imaging channel, and can be steered in flight by an operator over a two-way radio link. Dallas Analytics estimates its speed at about 230 metres per second — covering 14 km in roughly a minute — and it can engage stationary and moving targets.

Source: Dallas Analytics / Army Recognition

The paperwork also shows an industry under strain. In a May 2024 letter, Vympel urged the defence bureau KBM to speed up deliveries of components, warning that delays threatened the assembly of missile launchers and could jeopardise nine contracts, as Russian production is stretched by the demands of the war in Ukraine.

Source: Financial Times via outlet comparison

What is solid

  • The documents establish the order and the production schedule, and their credibility is supported by a separate schedule in the same records listing six Yak-130 jet trainers for Iran in 2023, which matches publicly reported deliveries.
  • Iran finalised agreements in November 2023 to buy at least six Russian Mi-28 attack helicopters — the aircraft type that mounts these launchers — according to Iranian Deputy Defence Minister Mehdi Farahi; footage shared in January 2026 showed an Mi-28 in a hangar in Tehran.

What is only claimed

  • The records do NOT establish whether the 90 launchers were ultimately delivered to Iran, or whether any LMUR missiles were supplied with them; the Institute for the Study of War notes it remains unclear whether Iran received the launchers and their missiles.
  • The reports carried no public confirmation of the contract from the Russian or Iranian governments.

A two-way arms relationship

The deal adds a new layer to military cooperation that has run in both directions since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when Tehran became a crucial supplier of Shahed attack drones that Russia has since begun manufacturing domestically. In its November 5 assessment, the Institute for the Study of War said Iran sought the Russian equipment in 2023 and 2024 in ways that could support counterinsurgency and border-security operations, given the missile's limited range.

Source: ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, Nov 5 2026

What happens next: the revelation lands while Washington weighs resuming strikes on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz stays shut, so a documented Russian precision-weapons pipeline to Tehran hardens the Moscow-Tehran axis at the centre of the Gulf crisis — and gives US and Israeli planners one more capability to factor in. For the lakhs of Punjabi and Indian workers across the Gulf, every step that deepens the war's military web raises the stakes of the US decision expected in the coming days.

Source: ISW / Financial Times reporting

The launcher documents surfaced on the same day Iran's security chief Mohsen Rezaei met Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin, carrying a message from Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. Read: Putin meets Iran security chief Rezaei in Moscow

Tehran has separately sent Washington a nuclear proposal through Qatar, tied to seven conditions including sanctions relief and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Read: Iran sends nuclear proposal to US via Qatar with seven demands