Iran's Support For Russia Spurs New Israeli and Saudi Help For Ukraine

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. JL

Yaroslav Trofimov reports in the Wall Street Journal:

The growing military cooperation between Russia and Iran has alarmed Tehran’s rivals Saudi Arabia and Israel. Both countries in recent weeks have signaled increasing support for Kyiv. Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister visited Kyiv, meeting President Zelensky and signing an agreement to provide $100 million in humanitarian assistance and a grant of $300 million in oil derivatives. Israel’s Foreign Minister also traveled to Kyiv to meet Mr. Zelensky, the first such visit by a senior Israeli official since the Russian invasion. “The visit is designed to build Western cooperation over a coming confrontation with Iran.”

Russia launched a new wave of Iranian-made drones against Ukrainian cities, breaking a weekslong lull in such attacks, as its forces continued to tighten their grip around the embattled eastern city of Bakhmut.

Ukraine’s military said it shot down 11 out of 14 Iranian-made Shahed drones late Sunday and early Monday, including all nine that were aimed at the capital city of Kyiv. The remaining three drones, however, hit targets in the central city of Khmelnytskyi, with explosions there killing two rescue workers and injuring three other people, according to the local government. Russia also fired S-300 missiles at the southern city of Zaporizhzhia overnight, hitting an infrastructure site but causing no casualties, the local government said.

Hours earlier, a drone attack on a military airfield near the Belarusian capital of Minsk knocked out a Russian A-50 airborne early warning and control plane, one of only a handful in Russia’s arsenal, according to Belarus’s opposition. The strike on Machulishchy airfield was carried out by two Belarusian partisans, said Franak Viacorka, an adviser to the country’s exiled opposition leader, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. While Moscow hasn’t commented on the attack, Russian military officers and analysts on social media confirmed that a serious incident had occurred at the airfield.

Airfields deep inside Russia have been repeatedly targeted by suspected Ukrainian drones in recent months, with some of the strikes hitting strategic bombers used to launch cruise missiles into Ukraine.

The frequency of Russian cruise-missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities has declined significantly this year, after regular barrages between October and early January tried and failed to destroy the country’s electricity infrastructure. Most of the country hasn’t had blackouts since early February. According to Western and Ukrainian intelligence officials, Russia’s reserves of cruise missiles are running low—one of the reasons why Moscow is increasingly relying on far cheaper Iranian drones.

 

While beefed-up Ukrainian air defenses in Kyiv and a handful of other major cities have become increasingly efficient against the drone threat, smaller cities in the country’s interior—such as Khmelnytskyi—represent a more vulnerable target. Ukraine is due to receive a significant boost in its air defenses in the coming months, including Patriot batteries supplied by the U.S. and Germany, and SAMP-T batteries provided by Italy and France.

The growing military cooperation between Russia and Iran has alarmed Tehran’s regional rivals, Saudi Arabia and Israel. While refusing to join Western sanctions on Russia or to supply weapons to Ukraine, both countries in recent weeks have signaled increasing support for Kyiv. Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan visited Kyiv on Sunday, meeting President Volodymyr Zelensky and signing an agreement to provide $100 million in humanitarian assistance and a grant of $300 million in oil derivatives. Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen also traveled to Kyiv to meet Mr. Zelensky earlier this month, the first such visit by a senior Israeli official since the Russian invasion began.

“The Saudi visit is designed to play well in Washington and is directed to building further Western cooperation over a coming confrontation with Iran,” said Sanam Vakil, deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa program at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, a London-based think tank.

In Bakhmut, which Russia’s Wagner paramilitary group has been trying to take since July, the position of Ukrainian defenders became more precarious as Russian troops kept inching closer to the city’s only remaining major supply route. Wagner, which relies in part on prisoners who had agreed to serve in Ukraine in exchange for a promise of amnesty, has sustained heavy casualties in the Bakhmut campaign. Still, it was the only force able to advance along the entire front line since Russia mobilized hundreds of thousands of reservists last fall, stemming a Ukrainian offensive.

“The situation is getting more and more difficult,’’ Mr. Zelensky said of Bakhmut in his nightly address Monday. “The enemy is constantly destroying everything that can be used to protect our positions, to gain a foothold and ensure defense.”

Ukrainian forces are currently training on new weapons systems promised by the U.S. and allies, such as Bradley and Stryker fighting vehicles and Leopard and Challenger tanks, as they prepare for a new push to reclaim occupied territories this spring.