President Volodymyr Zelenskyy informed the UK’s parliament Tuesday that his nation has despatched greater than 200 navy specialists to the Center East to advise different nations on methods to defend towards Iranian drones. It’s been broadly reported that the Gulf states and different nations have requested drone protection assist from Ukraine, however Zelenskyy offered new details about the scope of Ukraine’s help. He particularly confirmed that Ukraine had despatched groups to the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and that an extra 34 specialists are “able to deploy” to extra nations.
As Frida Ghitis famous in WPR final week, “Kyiv is now able to not directly avenge itself towards Iran, whose Shahed drones Russia has lengthy used to terrorize Ukraine’s civilian inhabitants.” She additionally defined that the Iran conflict has produced an “surprising alternative to leverage Ukraine’s experience to safe further assist from the U.S. and desperately wanted money from rich Gulf monarchies.”
Ukraine’s experience is so worthwhile partly as a result of they’ve developed a solution to defend towards Shahed drones that’s vastly cheaper than different accessible strategies. As Ulrike Franke famous in her WPR column yesterday, Iran’s assaults on U.S. navy bases and civilian infrastructure in Gulf states have been “forcing the U.S. and its Gulf companions to expend valuable and costly Patriot missiles to shoot down the comparatively low-cost drones.” Every Patriot missile interceptor, relying on the variant, prices between $3 million and $13 million, whereas Shahed drones value as little as $20,000. Against this, Ukraine’s protection system makes use of two or three small interceptor drones costing as little as $10,000 in whole to destroy a Shahed.
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