Ukraine Says It Struck Russia-Iran Military Cargo Ships in Caspian Sea, One Day After Trump Said He Trusts Putin's Word on Arms Sales

Ukraine says it just hit the supply line connecting Russia and Iran.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday, July 25, that Ukrainian forces achieved "very strong results with long-range strikes in the Caspian Sea, including vessels used in military cargo shipments involving Iran," according to a post on X. He gave no further details in that statement.

Ukraine's Security Service, the SBU, filled in the specifics. It said drones struck the Filanovsky offshore oil platform, operated by Russian company Lukoil, along with two cargo vessels, Port Olya 2 and Begey, and a Russian Project 12418 Molniya missile boat, according to reporting from United24Media.

Both cargo ships are under sanctions from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Ukraine, per the SBU. Ukrainian military intelligence, known as HUR, says Port Olya 2 belongs to a sanctioned Russian company called MG-Flot, linked to businessman Jamaladin Pashayev, who also controls the Port of Olya in Russia's Astrakhan region. HUR alleges Pashayev's other company, Navigator LLC, organizes military maritime transport for Russia's Ministry of Defense.

HUR further claims the Begey ferried ammunition, artillery shells, body armor, and helmets from Iran across the Caspian, and that its crew switched off the ship's Automatic Identification System during those runs. The SBU says Begey made regular stops at Iran's Amirabad Port, which Ukrainian authorities allege has been used to move Iranian-made attack drones into Russia.

None of these claims have been independently verified. Neither Russia nor Iran has commented on the reported strikes, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

The Trump-Putin Timing Problem

The Caspian strikes landed one day after President Trump warned China and Russia against arming Iran, saying it "would be very bad for them, certainly not in their best interests," according to the New York Post. Trump also wrote on Truth Social that Putin personally told him Russia would not sell weapons to Iran. "I think I trust them," Trump told reporters at the White House.

Diplomacy runs on some baseline of taking the other side's word provisionally while verifying independently. Trump isn't naive. He's the same president who slapped Russia with the warning in the first place.

But the timing is awkward. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said earlier in the week that Russia and China were involved with Iran "in ways he would not specify," according to the Post. And separate US intelligence sources told Reuters, as reported by the Jerusalem Post, that Iranian drone strikes on CIA facilities in March, including a CIA station inside the US embassy in Riyadh and another site in eastern Iraq, may have involved Russian assistance, possibly targeting data or drone technology. Those intelligence sources told Reuters they haven't reached firm conclusions on Russian involvement.

The Kremlin is telling Trump directly it's not selling Iran weapons. US intelligence agencies suspect Russian fingerprints on attacks against American facilities. Ukraine claims it just blew up ships it says were doing exactly what Putin denied. All three things are being asserted at once, but none of them fully confirm or refute each other.

A Deadlier Backdrop

The Caspian operation didn't happen in isolation. It came one day after Russia launched a ballistic missile strike near Kyiv on July 24 that killed at least 10 people and injured almost 100, according to RFE/RL, hitting an exhibition of drone technology. Ukraine's Prosecutor-General's Office has opened an investigation into whether officials were negligent in organizing that event. Acting Kyiv regional administration head Ruslan Oliynyk called the strike a "terrorist act." Separately, six people died in Russian glide bomb attacks on Slovyansk in the Donetsk region the same day.

Zelensky described Saturday's Ukrainian strikes as "long-range sanctions" in retaliation. Beyond the Caspian targets, Ukraine says it hit an enterprise in Kirov supplying components for Russian weapons, a logistics facility in Yekaterinburg belonging to online retailer Wildberries, which Ukraine alleges supports military logistics (Moscow denies this), an oil refinery in Tyumen, and a fuel depot in Rostov-on-Don. The SBU also said it damaged a Russian S-400 radar component and destroyed a Tor-M2 air defense system and drone warehouses near Rostov-on-Don.

Russia's Defense Ministry claimed its air defenses intercepted 328 Ukrainian drones overnight, without saying how many got through.

None of Ukraine's claims about the Caspian strikes, the cargo ships, or the alleged Iran-Russia weapons pipeline have been confirmed by independent observers. Whether Moscow's assurances to Trump hold up and whether the Reuters-reported CIA facility strikes get formally attributed to Russia remain open questions with no resolution date in sight.