WASHINGTON — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday were spotted in a serious discussion ahead of Sen. Lindsey Graham’s funeral — puzzling viewers on what was said between the two wartime presidents.
An Israeli official on Wednesday revealed the pair addressed drones as part of the impromptu chat, noting that both countries have to wrestle with the technologythat has come to largely dominate the battlefield.
“We both share an issue, and that is drones,” the person told a small group of reporters.
Specifically, Israel and Ukraine are most concerned about first-person view (FPV) drones, which are impossible to stop through radar jamming as they are guided by fiberoptic cables instead of radio signals.
Ukrainian Ambassador to the US Olha Stephanishyna told The Post the conversation “was also about general assessment of the military situation in Ukraine and effectiveness of new technologies.”
A separate Ukrainian official added that the brief conversation “wasn’t planned” and “Bibi approached Zelensky himself and it was small talk.”
Ukraine has extensive experience fighting Russian FPVs, as well as developing and deploying their own. Israel, on the other hand, is less experienced in combating them — yet is seeing them more and more on the battlefield.
“The prime minister has been impressed with how [Ukraine] turned the war around [in their favor],” the officials said.
Hezbollah on Tuesday night broke a fragile truce with the Jewish state, sending an FPV droneto strike an Israeli armored bulldozer in the Israeli Defense Force’s buffer zone in southern Lebanon, Israel said on Wednesday.
While no one was injured in that attack, it underscored the seriousness of the threat posed by FPVs — and the growing need to counter them, the official said.
While Ukraine helped many regional countries targeted with Iranian drones during the first phase of the Iran war, Israel resisted Kyiv’s help, according to reporting at the time.
The Israeli official did not say whether there could be a partnership in the future between Israel and Ukraine.
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