E-Paper
When two wars meet at lake: Ukraine's strike in Caspian Sea and the Iran-Russia angle
A Ukrainian drone strike on an Iranian vessel has, for the first time, turned a lake into the direct intersection of two active wars
Two active wars intersected directly for the first time last Saturday, when a Ukrainian drone strike in the Caspian Sea drew Tehran into a diplomatic quarrel with Kyiv and turned the spotlight on a lake that has quietly become a key waterway for allies Russia and Iran.
Tehran said Ukraine's attack on an Iranian vessel killed one sailor and injured others. Kyiv said its long-range strikes had hit vessels used to move military cargo between Iran and Russia, as well as a Russian warship.
Tehran called the attack "hostile and criminal", summoned Ukraine's chargé d'affaires, and warned of "unforeseen" consequences. Ukraine dismissed the threats as "unjustified and groundless".
Russia's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, backing Tehran, said the strike should be considered an assault on Iran itself.
The exchange pivoted focus on the Caspian Sea — a landlocked stretch of water more than 1,500km from Kyiv, bordered by Russia and Iran among others — and on the question of why Ukraine chose to strike there.
Also read: Deconstructing the direction of the Iran conflict
What happened?
Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) said its drones had hit an oil platform in the northern Caspian, a Russian missile boat, and cargo vessels under international sanctions. Iran's ambassador to Russia, Kazem Jalali, told Iranian state media the ship — named as the Anna — was anchored about 5km from the mouth of the Volga river when it was struck. Iran said its cargo was iron and that the vessel had been sailing from the Russian port of Astrakhan to Anzali, Iran's largest port on the Caspian.
Ukraine's ambassador to Israel, Yevgen Korniychuk, contested that account, claiming that the vessel was carrying components for drones and missiles from Iran to Russia. But Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi told his Russian and European counterparts the attack "cannot go unanswered".
The Caspian Sea strike was the direct link, but the two wars have crossed paths indirectly before. Russia has for long deployed Iran-made and modified Shahed drones in its war against Ukraine. And Kyiv, in recent months, sent a team to Gulf states – which were targeted by Iran for hosting American military installations – to share its expertise on drone interception.
Also read: Every nation wants to copy Iran’s deadly Shahed drone
Why the Caspian matters
The Caspian is the world's largest inland body of water, bordered by five states: Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Under the 2018 Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, no third-country armed forces may be deployed on its waters — a firewall that has, until now, made it a rare shared sanctuary for both Moscow and Tehran.
For Russia, it is what Basil Germond, professor of international security at Lancaster University, called a "rear maritime space". Writing in The Conversation, Germond noted that as Ukrainian drones and missiles have made the Black Sea increasingly hostile, elements of Russia's naval forces have been redeployed to the Caspian via inland waterways.
For Iran, whose southern ports on the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman are under a US naval blockade, the Caspian has become a corridor of survival. Bijan Khajehpour, managing partner at the Vienna-based consultancy Eurasian Nexus Partners, told CNN that the sea offers Tehran "a strategic complement rather than a substitute for Iran's existing maritime access", allowing trade with Russia, the Caucasus, central Asia, and — via rail — China and, indirectly, eastern Europe.
"The recent blockade by the US has underlined the strategic value of the Caspian Sea route," he said.
Crucially, it is also considered the pipeline for the military relationship between Iran and Russia. The US has assessed that Iranian ballistic missiles have been transported through the lake, and Shahed drone shipments to Russia were routed via the Caspian from 2022.
Ukraine's calculation
Experts believe Kyiv has taken a multi-pronged approach for these strikes.
The first is disruption. Olha Polishchuk, a researcher of the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled), told the BBC that Saturday's strike was "less about opening a new front against Tehran" than an extension of Ukraine's campaign against the logistical networks that sustain Russia's war effort.
"Targeting that route allows Kyiv to put further pressure on Russia's supply networks beyond the traditional battlefield," she said.
The second is signalling. A strike more than 1,500km from Kyiv is a demonstration of its long-range reach, at a moment when the country's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is arguing that his forces are dismantling Russia's economic base. Zelenskyy has called it a "long-range sanctions campaign" against Russia-linked oil depots, shadow-fleet tankers, and, now, Caspian cargo routes.
The third may be timing. Zelenskyy is due in Washington this week to meet US President Donald Trump. American military aid and weapons are significant for Ukraine to sustain its war capabilities against Russia.
In the days before the Caspian Sea strike, the Ukrainian President released intelligence that Russia had been feeding Iran satellite imagery of American military installations in the Gulf — four air bases on July 19 and 20 alone, in Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait, he said.
Ukraine and the United States are, in Kyiv's projection, on the same side.
