Ukraine Did the Unthinkable in Hormuz… The U.S. Was Totally Unprepared

Ukraine Did the Unthinkable in Hormuz… The U.S.

Was Totally Unprepared

Nobody saw this coming, not the Pentagon, not Iran, and certainly not Russia.

Because right now, in the middle of one of the most consequential military conflicts in decades, the country that everyone wrote off is quietly pulling off one of the most brilliant geopolitical moves of the entire war.

And that country is not the United States.

It is not Israel.

It is Ukraine.

And what Ukraine is doing in the Middle East right now is so unexpected, so strategically layered, and so potentially game-changing for the Strait of Hormuz crisis, that when you understand the full picture, you are going to struggle to believe this is actually happening in real time.

Stay with me, because this story has three layers.

The first is about a blockade, and who knows how to break one.

The second is about revenge, and who has the most to gain from it.

And the third is about something that nobody in the mainstream press is connecting yet.

The fact that the weapon Iran used to terrorize Ukraine for four straight years is now the weapon Ukraine is turning directly against Iran in the Strait of Hormuz right now.

Welcome to States News.

Let’s get into it.

Let’s start with something that Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, Andriy Sybiha, said publicly that stopped a lot of people cold.

He posted on X, and his words were simple but devastating.

He said that what the world is watching in the Strait of Hormuz is, in his words, “painfully familiar.

” Russia did the same in the Black Sea.

It blocked maritime trade, trying to strangle Ukraine’s economy and achieve political and military goals.

That one sentence tells you everything you need to know about why Ukraine’s involvement in this crisis is not a coincidence.

It is a recognition.

Ukraine has lived this story.

It has been the victim of this exact playbook.

And now, with Iran running that same playbook in the Gulf, Ukraine has something nobody else in this situation has.

A working answer.

But before we get to that answer, you need to understand exactly how Ukraine survived the Russian version of this blockade.

Because that survival story is the entire basis of what is now being transferred to the Gulf states.

When Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, one of his first strategic moves was to seal off Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.

Russia had the warships of the Black Sea Fleet at its disposal.

The strategy was straightforward.

No ships in, no ships out.

Strangled the economy, apply pressure until Ukraine breaks.

That blockade cost Ukraine approximately $20 billion in annual revenue.

A staggering number for an economy already under the weight of a full-scale war.

A significant chunk of that lost income was grain.

Ukraine is one of the most important agricultural exporters in the world, feeding buyers in Asia and Africa.

Russia’s blockade was not just an attack on Ukraine.

It was an attack on global food supply chains.

And for a while, it worked.

Ukraine had no immediate answer.

Russia’s warships controlled the sea lanes, and Ukraine had nothing in its arsenal that could challenge a naval fleet of that scale.

So, Ukraine did what Ukraine has done throughout this entire war.

It improvised, it innovated, and it founded an asymmetric answer to a conventional problem.

First came the ballistic missiles.

Storm Shadow cruise missiles started reaching Russian warships with devastating effect.

But missiles alone weren’t enough.

So, Ukraine developed something that the world had never seen deployed at scale in a modern naval conflict.

Naval drones.

Unmanned surface vessels capable of crossing open water, navigating at speed, and detonating against a target with enough force to sink or critically damage a warship.

The Magura drone.

The Sea Baby drone.

These were not improvised explosives strapped to a boat.

These were engineered weapon systems that evolved in real time, becoming more capable, more precise, and more lethal with every iteration.

By their latest version, these naval drones could carry their own missiles.

They could launch FPV attack drones mid-mission.

They had become a complete weapons platform disguised as a relatively cheap unmanned watercraft.

The results were historic.

Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, which was one of the most feared naval forces in the region at the start of the invasion, has been chopped down in size by roughly a third.

Russia’s warships have been forced to withdraw from the Black Sea.

The fleet that was supposed to enforce the blockade indefinitely has been made almost irrelevant by a country that had no navy to speak of when the war began.

And Ukraine did it not with aircraft carriers or destroyers.

It did it with innovation, drone technology, and a layered maritime defense strategy that nobody had ever tried at this scale before.

Today, Ukraine’s trio of ports in Odessa are visited by 200 cargo ships every month, according to Politico.

A waterway that Russia tried to permanently close is back open.

Not because Russia chose to open it, because Ukraine made closing it too expensive.

That, right there, is the blueprint.

And the Gulf states dealing with Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz want it.

They want every page of it.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy just completed a visit to the Middle East that was, by any measure, one of the most strategically significant diplomatic missions Ukraine has conducted since the war began.

And according to Zelenskyy himself, every single conversation he had with every single leader he met kept coming back to the same subject, the Strait of Hormuz.

And the tactics Ukraine used to break Russia’s grip on the Black Sea.

Zelenskyy described it in his own words.

He said, “We raised this issue because it is painful and hot for the whole world, because there is an energy crisis.

” He added that Middle Eastern nations have seen the success that Ukraine achieved in breaking the Black Sea blockade.

Want the details.

And Ukraine, he confirmed, is sharing them.

Now, let’s talk about what is actually at stake in the Strait of Hormuz, because the numbers here are almost incomprehensible in their scale.

Approximately 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes through this single waterway every year.

20%.

Not of a region’s supply, of the entire planet.

The BBC has put a dollar figure on what flows through those waters annually.

$600 billion in trade.

$600 billion every year through one narrow pass of water that Iran has now effectively blockaded since the United States launched Operation Epic Fury.

And the shockwaves are being felt everywhere, but nowhere harder than Asia.

About 90% of the oil and LNG that transits the Strait of Hormuz is bound for Asian buyers.

Japan, South Korea, India, China, the Philippines.

All of them are on the receiving end of a supply shock that has no immediate relief in sight.

China had the foresight to build up 3 months of strategic reserves specifically for scenarios like this one.

It is feeling the squeeze.

Citizens there have already seen a 20% increase in fuel prices.

3 months of reserves sounds like a lot until you realize this conflict shows no signs of ending.

In the Philippines, a national energy emergency has been formally declared.

Daily wages in some sectors have effectively collapsed due to fuel price increases cascading through the economy.

India has a problem that illustrates just how interconnected all of this is.

400,000 of its citizens work in the country’s ceramics industry, which has been forced to shut down for a full month because the energy inputs required to run that industry have become unaffordable.

400,000 workers shut down because of a blockade in a waterway most of them have never seen before.

At the peak of this crisis, oil prices hit $119 per barrel, according to NBC News.

A price point not seen since the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Catastrophic supply chain disruptions.

And analysts warned that if this continues for an extended period, what we are seeing now could be just the early tremors of a much larger economic earthquake.

The Gulf states, specifically, this is what the Guardian has called their worst nightmare.

Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates.

These are nations whose entire economic models depend on being able to sell energy through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s blockade doesn’t apply to ships doing business with Iran.

But for everyone else, the tap has been turned off.

According to Ynet News, the Gulf states have already lost approximately 1% of their entire gross domestic products in the months since Operation Epic Fury began.

Capital Economics forecasts GDP losses of between 5% and 15% if this conflict drags on for 3 months or more.

That is an economy-defining loss.

And with signals pointing toward a potential US ground operation in Iran that could extend the timeline by weeks or months, 3 months is no longer an abstract projection.

It is becoming a realistic scenario.

These nations don’t have the luxury of waiting for the United States to solve this with air power alone.

They need options.

They need expertise, and they need it now.

So, they called Ukraine.

Here is where Zelenskyy’s visit becomes not just newsworthy, but genuinely historic.

A raft of weapons agreements has been finalized through this trip.

The Kyiv Independent reports that these agreements currently cover air defenses, naval drones, electronic warfare systems, and software.

Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have all signed on.

According to Zelenskyy, these agreements are set to last at least a decade.

A decade.

This is not a one-time arms deal.

This is the foundation of a long-term strategic relationship between Ukraine and some of the wealthiest nations on Earth.

And the Gulf states are not just paying in cash.

Zelenskyy confirmed that at least part of the compensation for these weapons and this expertise is coming in the form of energy supplies, which is a deeply practical arrangement for a country burning through resources fighting a full-scale war.

Ukraine gives them the tools to reopen their waterway.

They give Ukraine the energy and financial resources to keep fighting Russia.

But the agreements don’t stop at hardware because hardware without expertise is just expensive metal.

And Zelenskyy confirmed that expert groups from Ukraine have already traveled to the Middle East to begin the knowledge transfer in person.

Ukrainian military and technical personnel are on the ground in the Gulf right now sitting with the military personnel of nations that until recently had almost no relation with Ukraine teaching them the doctrine and the tactics and the techniques that turned Ukraine from a country with no effective naval capability into a force that humiliated Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

Zelenskyy described the reception from the Gulf nations simply.

He said the leaders and military personnel of those nations are grateful.

They should be.

Now, here is where this story pivots into something that goes beyond strategy and into something that feels almost like poetry.

Because for Ukraine, this is not just business.

This is revenge.

And the reason it is revenge requires understanding a connection that a lot of people still haven’t fully processed.

The drones that have been falling on Ukrainian cities for 4 years are not Russian drones in any meaningful original sense.

They are Iranian.

Russia didn’t have mass-produced long-range strike drone capability when Putin launched his invasion.

It had to get that capability from somewhere.

And the somewhere was Iran.

According to the conversation, Russia is now approaching the point where it can build roughly 1,000 long-range strike drones every single day.

Almost all of them are Shahed-type designs or variants of a design that Iran formally licensed to Russia approximately 4 years ago.

That license came with more than just blueprints.

Iran sent its own experts into Russia to teach the Russians how to build those drones, how to deploy them at scale, and how to use them to maximum effect against a civilian population.

In return, Iran deepened its security relationship with Russia gaining influence, resources, and the protection of Moscow’s political umbrella.

There are now dedicated production facilities inside Russia that exist solely to manufacture drones of Iranian design.

The Shahed-136, which Russia calls the Geran-2, has become a more common sight in Ukrainian skies than in Iranian territory.

In February of this year, Russia deployed 5,059 drones against Ukraine in a single month.

That was a 13% increase over January’s already staggering.

And in the 24 hours between March 23rd and March 24th, Russia launched 948 drones in a single day.

A single day.

None of that was possible without Iran’s technology, Iran’s expertise, and Iran’s deliberate decision to arm Russia knowing full well what those weapons would be used for.

Ukraine is acutely aware of this.

It lives with the consequences of it every night when the sirens go off.

And now, Ukraine is in the extraordinary position of being able to do to Iran exactly what Iran did to Russia.

It transfers technology, transfers expertise, builds relationships with nations that Iran depends on for its strategic position in the region.

And does it in a way that directly counters the weapon Iran spent years perfecting.

Because here is the detail that makes this revenge complete.

Ukraine hasn’t just learned to survive Iran’s Shahed drone design in the skies over Kyiv.

It has developed an answer to it.

Over the 4 years that Russia has been launching Shahed variants against Ukrainian cities, Ukraine’s engineers have been working on interceptor drone technology specifically designed to counter mass drone swarms, low-cost drones that collide with incoming
Shaheds and take them down in the air before they reach their targets at a fraction of the cost of firing an anti-air missile.

Missile.

In February, more than 70% of the Shahed-type drones Russia launched at Kyiv were destroyed by Ukraine’s new interceptors.

The interceptor drones cost as little as $1,150 to build.

The Shahed drones they destroy cost more than that.

The anti-air missiles that the Gulf states have been using to knock down Iran’s drones cost vastly, vastly more than that.

Ukraine is now developing interceptor technology designed to take down entire targeted swarms automatically.

And under the new agreements with its Gulf partners, Ukraine may share this technology, too.

Think about what this looks like from Iran’s perspective.

The drone design that Iran licensed to Russia to use against Ukraine is now the drone design that Ukraine has countermeasures against.

And those countermeasures are now being transferred to the Gulf states that Iran is currently attacking with Shahed variants.

Iran’s own weapon reflected back at it through a chain of events that Iran itself set in motion.

And then, add the naval dimension.

If Ukraine transfers the blueprints and production knowledge for its SeaBaby and Magura naval drones to its Gulf part, those nations gain the ability to deploy exactly the type of unmanned surface vessel that turned the tide in the Black Sea against Russia’s warships.

Iran’s fast attack boats, the small, maneuverable IRGC Navy craft that have been used to enforce the blockade and swarm commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, are actually more vulnerable to this type of system than Russia’s warships were.

They are smaller, lighter, less armored, and more numerous in shallow water where larger naval vessels struggle to operate effectively.

A fleet of sea-based attack drones modeled on what Ukraine used against Russia, deployed by Gulf states that have now received Ukraine’s full expertise in how to build and operate them, changes the dynamic in the strait entirely.

Combine the naval drone capability with the aerial interceptor technology, layer on the electronic warfare expertise Ukraine has developed to confuse and jam Russia’s drone guidance systems, and then add the broader layered defense architecture that Ukraine built to protect its cargo ships in the Black Sea corridor.

And the Gulf states are not just getting weapons.

They are getting a complete, tested, battle-proven counter strategy to exactly the type of asymmetric maritime blockade Iran is running.

Now, let’s talk about what this means beyond the immediate crisis because Zelenskyy didn’t travel to the Middle East just to sell drones and help reopen a waterway.

He went there to reposition Ukraine in the global order.

And what he has pulled off goes far deeper than any single weapons deal.

Ukraine has been fighting for its survival for over 4 years.

The war with Russia is not showing signs of ending.

Putin has not moved from his maximalist demands during peace talks.

Ukraine needs long-term partners with deep pockets, strategic resources, and the political will to stand behind Kyiv for years to come.

The Gulf states have all three of those things.

Qatar and Saudi Arabia have both committed to decade-long defense partnerships with Ukraine.

The UAE is close behind, according to The Guardian.

These are not transactional relationships.

These are structural alignments, and they set Ukraine up for exactly the kind of long-term support it needs.

Advanced air defense systems capable of intercepting Russia’s ballistic missiles are the most urgent gap in Ukraine’s defense capability.

The Gulf states have access to, and in some cases manufacture, systems that could help fill that gap.

Cooperative defense production agreements could follow as the decade-long deals mature.

Energy supply arrangements provide immediate economic relief and the political relationships being built now create leverage for Ukraine in negotiations and multilateral forums where it has historically had limited influence.

Ukraine is not just a war-torn country fighting for survival.

It is becoming a defense technology exporter, a provider of battle-tested expertise that wealthier nations are willing to pay significant sums to access.

Oleksandr Kraiev of the Ukrainian Prism Foreign Policy Council put it plainly to Ukrinform.

He said, “Our experience is something we can trade for additional security and a stronger negotiating position.

We are showing the world that we are a more interesting and valuable partner than Russia.

Countries in the Middle East have have long-standing relations with Russia, contracts with it, and essentially saw no other country in the post-Soviet space besides Moscow that is changing right now in real time.

This is the dimension that should make Putin genuinely nervous because even as Russia tries to support Iran in the face of Operation Epic Fury, Putin is watching Russia’s influence in the broader Middle East erode beneath his
feet.

Nations that once bought Russian weapons, relied on Russian expertise, and took Russian security guarantees seriously are pivoting.

Ukraine, a country Russia has been trying to erase from the map for 4 years, is replacing Russia as the partner of choice in a region that Russia spent decades cultivating.

Trade relationships that existed because Gulf states bought 20% of the soybeans, wheat, corn, and sunflower oil that Ukraine produces evolved into something Putin never anticipated.

Defense partnerships, technology transfers, military cooperation, a decade-long strategic alliance between Ukraine and some of the wealthiest nations on Earth built on the foundation of shared opposition to Iranian and Russian aggression.

That is not a small development.

That is a geopolitical realignment.

Happened because Iran chose to arm Russia and because Ukraine chose to survive.

There are some things we have to be honest about because this story is genuinely extraordinary.

But it is not without its complications and limitations.

Ukraine’s drone expertise will take time to implement effectively in the Gulf.

Training military personnel, deploying new systems at scale is not something that happens overnight.

The Strait of Hormuz is still largely blockaded right now.

The United States is still the primary military force working to reopen it through Operation Epic Fury with A-10 Warthogs hunting Iranian fast attack boats and Apache helicopters clearing drone threats.

Ukraine’s contribution is a long game as much as it is an immediate solution to the crisis.

And the timeline matters enormously.

Capital Economics is warning about GDP losses of 10% to 15% if this goes on for 3 months.

The US ground operation that is being planned and briefed to President Trump could extend the conflict well beyond that window.

Every week that the strait stays closed, the economic pressure on Asian economies, Gulf state budgets, and global energy markets compounds.

Ukraine’s expertise may be the asymmetric solution that eventually complements the American military campaign, but it is not a quick fix.

Nothing about this situation is a quick fix.

But here is what is undeniably true and what makes this story so remarkable.

Nobody predicted this.

Not the geopolitical analysts tracking the Gulf crisis, not the defense commentators following Ukraine, not apparently the American military planners who launched Operation Epic Fury.

President Trump himself has implied publicly that other countries must take care of the Hormuz problem.

Ukraine and the Gulf states seem to be taking him literally.

And in doing so, Ukraine has positioned itself as something no one thought it could become in the middle of a grinding war on its own territory.

A net exporter of military capability, a nation that other countries are calling on, not just donating to.

Iran thought that supplying Russia with drones was a way to project power and deepen its most important strategic partnership.

It did not anticipate that those drones would be studied, analyzed, countered, and then used as the basis for a completely inverted replay of its own strategy run by Ukraine against Iran itself in the waterway that matters most to Iran’s regional position.

Russia thought that arming Iran was a way to extend its influence through a proxy into the Gulf.

It did not anticipate that doing so would provide Ukraine with both the motive and the credibility to build the relationships with Gulf states that are now systematically replacing Russia’s own influence in the region.

And the world thought Ukraine was simply trying to survive.

It turns out Ukraine was doing something more than that.

It was learning, adapting, building capabilities and knowledge, and a reputation that would eventually allow it to step onto a stage far larger than the one it was pushed onto on February 24th, 2022.

Here’s where things stand right now.

The Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed.

The Gulf states are losing billions of dollars every week and facing GDP projections that range from painful to catastrophic if this drags on.

Ukraine has signed decade-long defense partnerships with Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and potentially the UAE covering air defense, naval drones, electronic warfare, and software.

Ukrainian expert groups are already in the Middle East training Gulf military personnel.

Zelenskyy has confirmed that the lessons of the Black Sea are being actively transferred to the nations that need them most.

And Iran, which chose to arm Russia with the drones that terrorize Ukrainian cities, is now watching Ukraine use that exact expertise to arm the nations Iran is currently blockading.

The irony is almost too precise to be accidental.

But it is not irony.

It is strategy.

It is Ukraine playing a longer and more sophisticated game than almost anyone gave it credit for.

And it is the most unexpected development, a conflict already filled with developments that nobody saw coming.

States News will continue covering every layer of this story as it develops because what is happening right now in the Gulf, in Ukraine, and in the relationship between those two seemingly disconnected theaters is one of the most
important geopolitical stories of this decade, and it is just getting started.

If this gave you a perspective on the Strait of Hormuz crisis that your regular news feed isn’t providing, share it with someone who needs to understand what is really happening.

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Did you see Ukraine’s role in this coming? Because almost nobody did.

We’ll see you in the next one.