Ukraine Condemns Iranian Retaliation Threats

Ukraine has dismissed Iranian threats of retaliation, following Kyiv’s targeting of an Iranian cargo vessel in the Caspian Sea on Saturday. The incident marked the first direct link between the wars in Iran and Ukraine. “Iran’s threats are unjustified and groundless,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha posted on X this afternoon. “The government in Tehran is a direct accomplice to Russian aggression against Ukraine, fuelling Moscow’s criminal war with weapons that have killed Ukrainians since 2022,” he wrote, referring to the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Details of the Caspian Sea Strike

President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday announced that Ukrainian forces had achieved “very good results” in long-range strikes in the Caspian Sea, including against vessels used to transport military cargo linked to Iran. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said its drones had hit an oil platform in the northern Caspian Sea, along with a Russian missile boat and “cargo ships that are under international sanctions.” Iran’s ambassador to Russia, Kazem Jalali, told Iran’s state news agency that the “Anna” ship had been anchored about 5km (3 miles) from the mouth of the Volga River when it was targeted.

Ukraine and Iran’s Military Ties

Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel, Yevgen Korniychuk, said the vessel had been carrying components for drones and missiles from Iran to Russia, not civilian cargo. Speaking to Israel’s N12, he insisted that Ukraine and Israel were confronting the same “axis of evil” on different fronts. Iran and Russia have a close military relationship. Iran started supplying Russia with its domestically-manufactured Shahed drones in 2022, which Moscow has since modified and used to hit Ukrainian cities. In an interview with Sky News, published over the weekend, Zelensky said Tehran was planning to send ballistic missiles to Russia for use in the war (reports suggest that short-range missiles were already being supplied as early as 2024).

For its part, Ukraine has in recent months sent its military experts to a number of Gulf states to help them defend against Iranian drone attacks carried out in retaliation for US and Israeli strikes. The Caspian Sea forms a strategically vital supply route between Russia and Iran. Kyiv has long accused Tehran of complicity in drone attacks which have killed hundreds of Ukrainian civilians, but Saturday’s strike in the Caspian Sea appears to mark the first time Ukraine has directly targeted an Iranian ship. Iran reacted with fury to the assault which it said had killed one sailor and injured several others. The foreign ministry said Iran had “never intervened in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the attack represented “a blatant UN Charter violation done at Israel’s behest to drag Europe into its war.” The incident “CANNOT GO UNANSWERED,” he wrote on X. In his own statement on Monday, Sybiha included Araghchi’s post, with the words “Iranian lies” posted across it. He also accused Iran of trying to shift attention away from Russia’s attacks on ships carrying grain from Ukrainian ports, which he said were threatening global food security.

For its part, Ukraine has been relentlessly targeting Russian shadow fleet of oil tankers, looking to choke off a major source of revenue for the Kremlin. Along with drone strikes on oil depots and the Wildberries online retail warehouses, what Zelensky calls Ukraine’s “long-range sanctions campaign” is having increasingly serious impact on the Russian economy. But some experts question the wisdom of Kyiv’s decision to pick a fight with Iran. “The main idea… is to disrupt trading routes and cause as much damage as possible,” former intelligence official Ivan Stupak told the BBC. “But it’s not a good idea for Ukraine to have another battlefront with Iran. It’s not good for us,” he added.

Olha Polishchuk from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled) said the Caspian Sea strike was “less about opening a new front against Tehran” and instead could be seen as an extension of Kyiv’s targeting of networks supporting the Russian war effort. “Targeting that route allows Kyiv to put further pressure on Russia’s supply networks beyond the traditional battlefield,” she said.