“We assess that Iranian military personnel were on the ground in Crimea and assisted Russia in these operations,” he said. “The fact is this: Iran is now directly engaged on the ground and through the provision of weapons that are impacting civilians and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine — in fact, that are killing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.”

“The information we have is that the Iranians have put trainers and tech support in Crimea, but it’s the Russians who are doing the piloting,” he said, adding that the Russians decided to bring them to Crimea to help them after “operator and system failures early on, where either they weren’t being piloted appropriately and properly and were failing to reach targets or the systems themselves were suffering failures and not performing to the standards.”

The administration is going to “pursue all means to expose, deter, and confront Iran’s provision of these munitions against the Ukrainian people,” Kirby noted. “We’re going to continue to vigorously enforce all U.S. sanctions on both the Russian and Iranian arms trade. We’re going to make it harder for Iran to sell these weapons to Russia.”

Russian forces have used Iranian drones in a consistent campaign of missile strikes over the past two weeks that have targeted dozens of cities and villages across Ukraine, including some that have largely avoided the front lines of the war.

Russia’s targeting of Ukraine’s energy and critical infrastructure during this campaign has destroyed nearly a third of its power stations, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier this week.

Kirby’s remarks came a day after the State Department revealed the U.S. had gathered “abundant evidence” that Russian forces have been using Iranian drones to strike Ukrainian civilians and civilian infrastructure.

Around the time of Kirby’s comments, the United Kingdom announced new sanctions on Iran.

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“Iran’s support for Putin’s brutal and illegal war against Ukraine is deplorable. Today we are sanctioning those who have supplied the drones used by Russia to target Ukrainian civilians. This is clear evidence of Iran’s destabilizing role in global security,” British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said.

Those sanctioned include Maj. Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, the chairman of the armed forces General Staff who has overseen the army branches supplying Russia with drones; Brig. Gen. Seyed Hojjatollah Qureishi, Iranian negotiator in the deal; Brig. Gen. Saeed Aghajani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force UAV Command; and Shahed Aviation Industries, the Iranian manufacturer of the Shahed drones.