Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday he had spoken to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman about the situation in Iran and the Middle East and restated Kyiv’s offer to help deal with Iranian drones. “Ukraine has been fighting against (Iranian-designed) ‘Shaheds’ for years, and everyone acknowledges that no other country in the world has such experience,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram of his conversation. “We are ready to help and expect that our people will also receive the necessary support.”
Ukrainian manufacturers of cheap interceptor drones designed to knock out enemy unmanned aerial vehicles say they have the capacity to export in large volumes, amid inquiries from the US and Middle East prompted by the Iran war. Hundreds of drones based on Iran’s Shahed model and now made in Russia fill Ukraine’s skies during frequent attacks, and many are downed by air defences including western missiles, fighter jets, truck-mounted guns and interceptor drones.
Reported deaths and casualties from a Russian missile strike on a five-storey residential building in Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv have risen to at least 10 people, including two children, and 16 others wounded, officials said. Zelenskyy condemned Saturday’s attack and called for an international response. He said Russia struck Ukraine overnight with 29 missiles and 480 drones, targeting energy facilities in Kyiv and other central regions, with damage reported in at least seven other locations.
Police in Sweden have seized a false-flagged cargo ship off its southern coast believed to belong to Russia’s shadow fleet and suspected of transporting stolen Ukrainian grain, authorities said Saturday. The 96-metre (315-foot) Caffa left Casablanca in Morocco on 24 February and was headed for St Petersburg when armed Swedish police boarded it on Friday off the southern town of Trelleborg. “The vessel is on the Ukraine sanctions list. Information indicates that it has essentially been used to transport grain that is stolen, as we understand it, from Ukraine,” the coast guard’s acting head of operations, Daniel Stenling, told a press conference.
Questions about the America’s weapons stockpiles have grown as the US campaign against Iran escalates, with many Democratic lawmakers arguing that Trump is waging a “war of choice.” Missile defence systems are under the most strain, according to experts, with Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, interceptors in high demand in Ukraine and Israel, respectively. “I’m not particularly worried about us actually running out during this conflict,” said Ryan Brobst, a scholar focused on US defense strategy at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies. “It’s about deterring China and Russia the day after this conflict is over.”
