A private Israeli firm is also said to be sending Ukraine satellite imagery of Russian military positions.
Edited by: TJVNews.com
Israel has been providing Ukraine with “basic intelligence about Iranian drones” that Russia is deploying in its war against Ukraine, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
JNS reported that a private Israeli company has also begun providing Ukraine with satellite imagery of Russian military positions on Ukrainian territory, the report said, citing a senior Ukrainian official.
On Wednesday, Ukraine shot down at least nine Iranian-made drones launched by Russia, Ukraine’s military said.
Meanwhile, Fox News reported on Tuesday that Moscow has armed its neighbor and ally Belarus with dozens of Iranian-made drones, as tensions between Minsk and NATO grow and Belarus threatens to send ground forces into Ukraine to support its Russian ally, as was reported by JNS.
Kyiv’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, a part of its Defense Ministry, said on Tuesday that 32 Iranian-made Shahed-136 suicide drones arrived in Belarus in recent days and that eight more are slated to arrive by Friday, JNS reported.
Ukraine said 84 cruise missiles and dozens of drones were fired by Russia at its cities on Wednesday, targeting energy infrastructure and other civilian sites.
“Ukraine has asked Israel for air defense systems as well, given the successes of that country’s Iron Dome as well as the longer-range Barak-8 [surface-to-air missile]. Israel has so far declined, however, reluctant to provoke Russia into obstructing Israeli airstrikes in Syria, where Russia has a military presence,” the Times reported.
JNS reported that on late September, a senior Ukrainian official said Israel delivered “a little bit of intelligence information” about Iranian weapons being supplied to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine.
However, “we need much more than that,” Kan News reported the official as saying.
World Israel News reported that some two weeks after Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky announced that he had submitted a fast-track application to join NATO, a Russian official warned that Ukraine joining the Western-aligned military pact would exacerbate the conflict and potentially thrust the international community into a world war.
“Kyiv is well aware that such a step would mean a guaranteed escalation to World War Three,” Russian state-owned news agency TASS quoted Alexander Venediktov, the deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, as saying, according to the World Israel News report.
According to a Reuters report, Venediktov added that Ukraine’s application to join NATO was essentially “propaganda,” as Western powers understand the implications should the embattled eastern European nation be admitted.
“Apparently, that’s what they are counting on – to create informational noise and draw attention to themselves once again.
“The suicidal nature of such a step is understood by NATO members themselves,” he said.
Notably, a number of NATO officials have downplayed the likelihood of Ukraine being accepted into the pact. In order for a country to be admitted to NATO, there must be a unanimous consensus from the 30 nations that are currently members, according to the WIN report.
Zelensky’s announcement that he had applied to join NATO was met with silence by the majority of member states.
WIN also reported that National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan issued a laconic statement, saying that Ukraine’s potential membership in NATO “should be taken up at a different time.”
Venediktov also referenced recent remarks made by Zelensky in which he had called for NATO powers to launch “preemptive strikes” on Russia’s nuclear warheads.
Zelensky’s comments triggered a stern statement from Russian president Vladimir Putin, who said that he would use nuclear weapons should NATO launch an offensive against his country, according to the WIN report.
Although Zelensky later walked back his remarks, claiming that the preemptive strikes should be economic in nature, rather than involving military force, Moscow warned against Western powers entertaining the idea of attacking Russia.
(WorldIsraelNews.com & JNS.org)
