Iran’s foreign ministry said on Saturday that Ukraine attacked an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea, killing one sailor and injuring another.
The ministry called the apparent attack an act of aggression and said Iran would defend its national interests and security. Iranian state media reported that Ukraine’s diplomatic representative to Iran was summoned.
Kyiv has not denied it. On the same day, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on X that Ukraine had “achieved very strong results with long-range strikes in the Caspian Sea, including vessels used in military cargo shipments involving Iran”. He did not directly address the ministry’s account of a sailor’s death.
Why the Caspian matters
Iran and Russia are two of the five countries bordering the Caspian. Russia keeps a powerful naval force there, which makes the inland sea a platform for long-range power projection and a strategic link to Iran.
The condemnation came as Zelenskyy said Russia was passing its satellite observations in the Middle East to Iran so that Tehran could direct strikes in the region. Ukraine has spent the war countering Iranian-designed drones that Moscow uses, and it has offered its drone interception expertise to Middle Eastern countries that Iran has attacked.
Other developments in the war
Zelenskyy said in his nightly address that Russia wants to bring in 30,000 North Korean troops and has been preparing to receive them in the Voronezh region since June. North Korea sent an estimated 14,000 soldiers to Russia’s Kursk region in 2024 under a mutual defence pact.
Russian-installed authorities in the Russian-held part of Zaporizhzhia region said a drone attack on a holiday camp killed 12 people, five of them children. They accused Ukraine of deliberately targeting civilians. Kyiv did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Early on Sunday, Russian forces attacked Kyiv. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said falling debris started fires in at least three districts, including a blaze on the seventh and eighth floors of an apartment block in a central district. Ukraine’s air force said ballistic missiles were aimed at the capital, then lifted the air alert after about 50 minutes. No casualties were reported immediately.
Kazakhstan’s president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, said on Saturday that a peace deal might be reached if both sides froze the conflict and resumed negotiations. He spoke while meeting Vladimir Putin at a forum in Omsk. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Putin gave Tokayev a detailed account of Russia’s military operations in Ukraine.
