The United States is striking Iran's drone and missile production facilities in a joint campaign with Israel — the same type of operation Ukraine has repeatedly requested against Russia and been denied, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reports.
The US-Israeli campaign is targeting missile and drone manufacturing and storage sites across Iran, according to ISW. Ukraine, by contrast, has spent years asking Washington for Tomahawk cruise missiles to conduct equivalent strikes on Russian production infrastructure deep in the rear — a request the United States formally rejected in Fall 2025.
Ukrainian long-range drones can reach a significant portion of Russian territory, ISW notes, but their payloads are insufficient to destroy hardened structures or large industrial facilities. Tomahawks would have changed that calculus. ISW identifies two facilities in particular: the Shahed drone factory at the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Tatarstan, roughly 1,100 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, and the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant in Udmurtia, about 1,300 kilometers out, which produces a range of ballistic missiles.
Ukrainian forces have struck both sites. Drones hit Alabuga in 2025; Ukrainian-produced FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles struck Votkinsk in February 2026. Neither attack destroyed or disabled either facility, ISW says. Had Washington supplied Tomahawks in Fall 2025, ISW argues, Ukraine could have paired them with its expanding Flamingo production to more substantially degrade Russia's capacity to sustain the Winter 2025-2026 missile and drone campaign against Ukrainian energy and civilian infrastructure.
Moscow's reaction to the Iran strikes has been pointed. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov invoked the language of international law, claiming that Russia "respects other states' sovereignty and does not interfere in their internal affairs," and called for all parties to cease hostilities. Lavrov also pushed back on President Donald Trump's characterization of Iran's nuclear ambitions, stating there is "no evidence" that Tehran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
Kyiv took the opposite position. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on 3 March called the US-Israeli strikes "a good decision" against what he described as a regime seeking a nuclear weapon.
Zelenskyy also offered a practical exchange: Ukraine is prepared to supply Middle Eastern states with drone interceptors in return for interceptor missiles for Patriot air defense systems. His reasoning was direct — Patriot systems are valuable to the region but "are not suitable to defend against hundreds of Shahed drones," he said, a problem Ukraine has confronted at scale.
