BREAKING: Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, is negotiating to buy drone interceptors from Ukraine, the country Russia has been bombing for four years, to defend its oil fields from Iran, the country America has been bombing for two weeks.
Read that sentence as many times as you need. It is the 21st century in a single transaction.
The Wall Street Journal reports that a Saudi intermediary closely tied to Aramco is in advanced talks with Ukrainian manufacturers SkyFall and Wild Hornets for their P1-SUN and STING interceptor drones, plus Phantom Defense electronic warfare systems, in a multi-million-dollar batch purchase explicitly designed to destroy Iranian Shahed-type drones before they reach Saudi oil infrastructure.
Ukraine learned to kill Shaheds by being hit with them. Russia has launched thousands of Iranian-made Shaheds at Ukrainian cities, power stations, and military positions since 2022. Ukrainian engineers did not study the Shahed in a laboratory. They studied it falling through their bedroom ceilings. They reverse-engineered the threat, built interceptors calibrated to its exact flight profile, radar signature, and thermal characteristics, and fielded them under fire. The interceptors work because the engineers who built them did so while the drones they were designed to kill were attacking their homes.
Now Saudi Arabia wants to buy that knowledge. Not from Lockheed. Not from Raytheon. Not from the Patriot system that costs $3 million per missile and was designed to kill ballistic warheads, not $20,000 drones. From Ukrainian startups that built their products in basements and tested them on battlefields.
The strategic implications cascade across every domain this war touches.
For Ukraine, this is the moment the country transforms from victim to vendor. Zelensky’s government has spent four years asking the world for weapons. It is now selling them. Every interceptor drone that ships to Saudi Arabia funds Ukraine’s own defence, reduces Kyiv’s dependence on Western aid, and demonstrates that the country the world pitied has become the world’s most experienced counter-drone power. The “salesman of the year” meme circulating on X understates it. Ukraine is not selling products. It is selling survival expertise, and the market for survival expertise in a world of $20,000 drones is every country with infrastructure worth protecting.
For Saudi Arabia, this is an admission that the most expensive Western air defence systems in the world cannot efficiently kill the cheapest weapons in the world. The Kingdom operates Patriot batteries, THAAD interceptors, and an integrated air defence architecture that costs tens of billions. Against ballistic missiles, these systems perform. Against saturation swarms of $20,000 Shaheds, they are economically irrational: a $3 million Patriot missile destroying a $20,000 drone is a 150-to-1 cost inversion that the attacker wins by firing. Ukraine’s interceptors cost a fraction of Western missiles and are purpose-built for exactly the threat Iran is deploying. Aramco is not buying Ukrainian because it is fashionable. It is buying Ukrainian because the math demands it.
For Iran, this is the beginning of the end of the Shahed’s strategic advantage. The drone that closed Hormuz, burned Salalah, struck the SafeSea Vishnu, hit towers in Dubai, and terrorised Gulf capitals for two weeks is about to face a countermeasure designed by the people who have been fighting it longest. If Saudi fields are protected by Ukrainian interceptors calibrated to the Shahed’s exact signature, the IRGC’s cheapest and most effective weapon becomes progressively less effective with every unit deployed.
For the world, this is the moment the drone age produces its own antibody. The same battlefield that created the threat created the cure. Ukraine is the immune system the Gulf is purchasing.
https://t.co/eMrt5qYYst
NEW: Donald Trump is trying to force Congress to name things for him.
50 years ago, Congress unanimously tried to name a building for a different president. He vetoed it.
“I know of no Federal office buildings that have been named for a President while still in office,” Gerald Ford wrote. “This legislation might begin a precedent I believe it best not to establish.”
It’s shocking and unbelievable that people are mentioning me in the same sentence as Whitney. Her performance is my favorite. Beautiful. Graceful. Classy. Vocally disciplined. Poised. Champagne. Mine is more a quality beer, I think. Or since this is Chicago… Malort!! 🤭 hehe
A HEISMAN MOMENT once again… What an incredible play and individual effort by Mendoza on this play! Congrats to the Hoosiers on making to the top of the mountain!! 🏆🏔️
Eighty years ago, enemies laid down their arms.
Since then, we, Europeans, have built something extraordinary: a Union of peace, democracy, and solidarity. An anchor of stability.
Our Union was born as a peace project, and it remains one today.
Evil may have its hour, but God will have His day. This is one of the meanings enshrined in the story of Christ. Of His earthly suffering and death – and of His resurrection, and the truth that sooner or later, yet inevitably, evil will retreat, and life will triumph.
That is what we have wanted for all 1,152 days. We are united in this. Every day – and especially today, when Ukrainians of all Christian denominations celebrate Easter on the same date. Together. We fight for Ukraine together. And we pray for Ukraine together.
May evil’s hour end. May the day of life arrive. The day of peace. The day of Ukraine. The day that lasts for centuries. And we will be able to come together again. At one table. On a peaceful Easter.
May all this come true.
May God help us in this.
May there be peace. May there be Ukraine.
Christ is Risen!
He is Risen Indeed!
250 years ago today, Paul Revere’s midnight ride inspired the earliest Americans to unite against threats to our nation’s founding principles.
Today we find ourselves facing new attacks from within. We, the people, have an obligation to stand up and defend our democracy.
Afghans who fled violence & persecution should not be forced to go back to live under the Taliban.
This is cruel and wrong–and not who we are as Americans.
https://t.co/0fQACMWpmQ