KYIV, Ukraine — As the conflict in the Middle East escalates, Ukraine could prove to be an invaluable trove of battle-tested expertise from its own bitter and costly fight against Russia.
After months of pressure and hardened rhetoric from Washington aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, Kyiv is now also fielding requests for help as Iran’s Gulf neighbors grapple with the modern reality of drone warfare.
Hotels, airports and residential buildings have been hit in cities across the Gulf, wreaking havoc as Iran targets the U.S. military bases hosted by its neighbors. It’s a picture all too familiar in Ukraine, whose skies are swarmed by hundreds of Russian drones on a nightly basis, many of them of the Shahed type designed in Iran.
Kyiv’s forces deflect the majority of them every night, not with expensive air defense missiles — as many countries in the Middle East have done — but with much cheaper and more effective interceptor drones, technology honed and perfected by four years of intense drone warfare.
The raging war has made Ukraine a unique “ecosystem” that allows for real-time testing of innovative drone technology on the battlefield, said Marko Kushnir, a spokesperson for General Cherry, one of Ukraine’s top drone manufacturers.
“The feedback loop between the front and the manufacturer is very short,” Kushnir said. “We can get feedback in the morning, and in the evening have a solution that will be tackling new tasks on the battlefield.”
Created in 2023 by a group of veterans and volunteers, the Kyiv-based company produces close to 100,000 drones a month, Kushnir said. One of its flagship interceptor drones specifically stops Shaheds and is actively used by Ukraine’s armed forces, he added. The company was invited to take part in the Pentagon’s $1 billion Drone Dominance initiative before the Iran war broke out.
It’s a level of expertise that Ukraine has paid heavily for, Kushnir said — “with lives, territory and a very long war with a bigger, better-resourced enemy.”
There are two countries in the world that understand from experience how to fight a daily, grinding technological war with drones, he said. “That’s us and Russia,” Kushnir added.
Ukraine’s allies recognize that now, he said.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier this week that he received nearly a dozen requests from the U.S. and countries in the Middle East and Europe for “Ukraine’s experience in protecting lives, relevant interceptors, electronic warfare systems, and training.”
Ukraine’s experience in countering attack drones is “irreplaceable,” he said in a series of posts on X, and “the most advanced in the world.” Kyiv has dispatched teams to the Middle East, Zelenskyy said on Wednesday, raising the prospect of a weapons exchange, with Ukraine desperate for air defense missiles to counter the sophisticated weapons that Russia is using against Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure on a near daily basis.
“This is not about being involved in operations. We are not at war with Iran,” Zelenskyy told Reuters in comments released Sunday. “This is about protection and a thorough, complete assessment on our part of how to counter the Shaheds,” he said.
He said that what Ukraine will get in return for the assistance still needed to be discussed, adding: “Honestly, for us today, both the technology and the funding are important.”