U.S. President Donald Trump returns from a trip to Michigan July 27, 2026 at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected at the White House on Tuesday for talks with the US president Donald Trumpas he seeks to shore up support for kyiv at a time when conflicts between Russia and Iran have showed signs of convergence.
The meeting comes as American war against Iran and Russia large-scale invasion of Ukraine is reaching critical moments. Trump has air strikes suspended against Iran in a campaign to give diplomacy another chance, while Zelensky has been galvanized by a wave of deep strike success on Russian territory.
However, there appears to be no immediate end in sight for these two conflicts. In fact, the sprawling war in the Middle East has threatened in recent days to overlap with the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
Kyiv Saturday launched an attack on an Iranian commercial ship in the Caspian Sea, an incident that Tehran says left one person dead and several injured. The Islamic Republic threatened retaliation following this strike, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. adage via social networks, he “CANNOT GO WITHOUT RESPONSE”.
In a post on X Saturday, Zelenskyy said Ukraine has “achieved very good results with long-range strikes in the Caspian Sea – including on ships used in military cargo shipments involving Iran, as well as a warship.”
Christopher Granville, chief executive of TS Lombard, called the Ukrainian attack on an Iranian ship in the Caspian Sea a “very significant” development.
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself spoke with satisfaction about these strikes and justified them by claiming that Ukrainian intelligence services have evidence that Russian intelligence services are helping Iran target U.S. military sites in neighboring countries in the Middle East,” Granville told CNBC.Europe First edition” on Monday.
“It’s a collision of these wars. It’s a merger. I think fundamentally it’s very important. The military significance of this of course remains to be seen, but Iran said in its public statement that it would retaliate and that Ukraine had made a mistake that it would regret,” he added.
Ukrainian officials may think Iran has its hands full in its war against the United States, Granville said, “but it turns out that military exchanges between [the] The United States and Iran have calmed down over the past two or three days. So yeah, it’s a big deal.”
Wars are becoming ‘more and more linked’On Monday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrei Sybiha describe Iran’s threats of retaliation are considered “unjustified and baseless”.
The regime in Tehran “is a direct accomplice to Russian aggression against Ukraine, fueling Moscow’s criminal war with weapons that have killed Ukrainians since 2022,” Sybiha said via X, referring to the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Russia has long used Iranian-designed Shahed drones in its war against Ukraine, a weapon that analysts sometimes refer to as “the poor man’s cruise missile”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is pictured during his visit to the Portsmouth naval base on the south coast of England July 27, 2026.
Aaron Chown | Afp | Getty Images
Hamidreza Azizi, an Iranian security expert and visiting fellow at the Berlin-based SWP think tank, said that at the political level, Iran could respond to Ukraine’s attack by recognizing Crimea and Donbass as parts of Russian territory, areas occupied by Russia that Tehran has so far refused to approve.
“Regardless, what is clear is that the Iranian war is increasingly linked to two other conflicts: the Saudi-Houthi confrontation and the Russian-Ukrainian war,” Azizi said. said Sunday in a post on social networks.
“With each passing day, the war evolves into an increasingly complex, multidimensional international conflict,” he added.
Alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Zelensky is expected attend the funeral in Washington of late Senator Lindsey Graham during a service Tuesday. The two leaders are expected to meet with Trump during their visit.
For Zelensky, the meeting represents an opportunity to further improve relations with Trump, some 17 months after an Oval Office meeting that turned into a extraordinary shouting match.
— CNBC’s Azhar Sukri contributed to this report.
