Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has a “very bad feeling” about what the war in Iran means for his own prospects, and worried Middle Eastern countries carelessly burning through cutting-edge air defence missiles is going to cause a global shortage that Ukraine will suffer from most.
“President Trump is concentrating on Iran” and Putin wants a long war to maximise the harm to Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said as he expressed he has a “very bad feeling” about the war in Iran and what it means for his own military effort. Predominantly this is about global attention shifting away from rebuffing Russia’s now longstanding invasion meaning deliveries of military equipment will be diverted elsewhere, but the Ukrainian leader also said it was impacting the diplomatic attempts to bring about peace through dialogue.
Speaking to British state broadcaster the BBC, Zelensky said:
I have a very bad feeling about the impact of this war on the situation in Ukraine… there will be a reduced number of missiles for air defence… we just got through one winter and we had a deficit of anti-ballistic missiles for air defence but the next winter wills till come… there are consequences for air defence. And the focus of America is more on the Middle East than on Ukraine, unfortunately. So you see our diplomatic meetings, our trilateral meetings are constantly postponed, there is one reason; the war in Iran.
The United States will inevitably need more military resources, Zelensly reflected, saying that ultimately if it depleted its own reserves of missiles, it would request backfilling from its European allies, meaning these weapons wouldn’t ultimately end up in Ukraine.
Part of the problem, he said, was that while Ukraine had already learnt to carefully shepherd limited supplies of the most advanced air defence missiles, Western allies in the Middle East hadn’t yet realised they are living in a state of air defence scarcity and had been using the rarest, most expensive, and hard to acquire interceptors indiscriminately against relatively low-value drones. President Zelensky said of those countries burning through their stocks of the latest incarnation of the advances Patriot Missile, PAC-3:
…there will definitely be a deficit [of missiles available worldwide], I understand this absolutely… it’s my clear understanding that at the beginning of the War, the Middle Eastern countries threw absolutely everything to destroy the drones, using PAC-3 because they work against any air target.
And my question is now is when will all the stockpiles in the Middle East be exhausted? Today American produces 60-65 missiles per month? Can you imagine, that’s 700-800 missiles a year, and on the first day in the Middle East war 803 missiles were used.
Overcoming this will mean European nations not just giving Ukraine some of their military stores while keeping equipment behind for their own defence, but to dig deeper for the sake of defeating Russia in Ukraine: “Europe will need to help us, I understand that sometimes it may sound arrogant. I apologise. But this is a question of life itself”.
As for President Putin’s take on the Iran war, Zelensky said the Kremlin was delighted to see its ally, Tehran, rolled up by America because it takes the eyes of the world off Ukraine. President Trump is concentrated on Iran so diplomatic efforts including the Trilateral format meetings are postponed indefinitely, and Iran’s drone strikes soaking up the world’s finite stocks of Patriot missiles will benefit Putin in the long-term, too, he said.
President Zelensky explained:
Putin will want a long war. For Putin, a long war in Iran is a plus. In addition to energy prices, it means the depletion of U.S. reserves and the depletion of air defence manufacturers… a depletion of resources… he needs to weaken us and this is a long process. The Middle East is one of the ways to do that.
This is not the first time President Zelensky has made such remarks. As the war with Iran first commenced the Ukrainian leader said that while it “is right” for the U.S. and allies to tackle Iran and a “good decision”, nevertheless it risked Ukraine finding it considerably harder to arm itself as the Middle East became the main destination for weapons exports. He said in Early March:
We could have difficulty obtaining missiles and weapons to defend our skies. The Americans and their allies in the Middle East might need them to defend themselves, for example, anti-Patriot missiles… perhaps the Americans will need them, like last year… Israel was under Iranian attack [during the 12-Day War in June 2025], and the missile delivery programs for us were slowed down. Today, it hasn’t happened yet, but I fear it could happen again.
Zelensky does have certain advantages to hand, however. Ukraine has been fighting Iranian-designed Shahed drones for years, the exact type which has been launched en masse and indiscriminately across the Middle East in recent weeks and he has offered to export Ukrainian knowledge to the region.
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