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On July 25, Ukrainian long-range drones targeted an Iranian merchant vessel in the Caspian Sea, killing one sailor and injuring another. Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Abbas Araghchi called the strike a "hostile and criminal act." Iran is believed to be weighing options for retaliation. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine achieved "very strong results with long-range strikes in the Caspian Sea—including vessels used in military cargo shipments involving Iran, as well as a warship."
Last December, Ukrainian drones struck Russian oil rigs in the Caspian, the first instance of the war extending into a sea over 700 kilometres away from Ukraine. On March 27 this year, Israeli jets sank Iranian corvettes, missile boats and patrol vessels, striking at command centres and shipyard repair facilities around Iran's main Caspian port of Bandar Anzali.
The Ukrainian strikes came after a pause in a nearly two-week flare-up in the US-Iran war where the US struck Iran for 13 consecutive nights. The Financial Times reported that the strike prompted speculation in Tehran of a warning to demonstrate that Iran's Caspian coast is at risk, and could be leveraged in talks with the US.
The Caspian strikes are part of a pattern of the conflict zone expanding across global seas. On July 26, Houthi rebels launched drone and missile strikes at Saudi Arabia in response to Riyadh’s airstrike on Hodeida. The Houthis have threatened to block Saudi shipping passing through the Bab el-Madeb in the Red Sea, through which 12 per cent of global oil passes through.
Kyiv's strike on the Caspian, a completely landlocked sea with a surface area greater than India’s largest state, Rajasthan, underscores how tangled the threads of the Russia-Ukraine and the Iran-US war have become.
Besides Iran and Russia, the Caspian is bound by Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan. Russia has zeroed in on this sea route to bypass the militarily contested Black Sea route. The US believes the inland sea is a key link for shipping commercial and military cargo between Russia and Iran, both of whom are heavily sanctioned by the US.
In 2023, the Biden administration released proof that Iran was shipping drone components across the Caspian Sea through Russia’s Volga River system into Moscow’s largest drone-producing factory in Yelabuga, Tatarstan, that makes over 90 per cent of the Geran-2, clones of Iranian Shahed-136 drones.
From India's perspective, a conflict in the Caspian is another nail in the coffin of the North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a 7,200 kilometre network of railroads, highways and shipping routes connecting Mumbai to Moscow. On July 16, the US military destroyed a surveillance tower in Chahbahar port.
The port is the southern end of the INSTC, and where India has invested in building the Shahid Behesti shipping terminal. India's Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) clarified that the terminal was undamaged, but the war raging at two ends of Iran has thrust the INSTC into contested space.
There is no clarity about the fate of the 24 river-sea class cargo vessels being built by India’s state-owned Goa Shipyard Ltd. The contract signed between India and Russia on October 26, 2023, called for the GSL to construct 24 river-sea class cargo vessels for Russian clients in the Caspian Sea by 2027.
GSL would build the ships in three categories – chemical tankers, bulk carriers, and container cargo ships – for use in the Caspian Sea. Each vessel is priced at $28 million. The ships were a key component of a projected $100 billion India-Russia trade by 2030, but with parallel conflicts raging and now intersecting, the INSTC seems to be on the back burner for now.
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Published On:
Jul 27, 2026 14:16 IST
