Zelenskyy believes 'it will be very hot' in Middle East in coming months

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy believes the situation in the Middle East will worsen further in the coming months, Report informs.

"It will be very hot," Zelenskyy said of the coming months in the Middle East in a remote video interview with The Jerusalem Post. "They will do everything not to be a possibility for the country to give electricity to people. So not to have conditions. So not to have water, not to have drinking water."

President Zelenskyy said Russia helped Iran improve its Shahed drones after first using Ukraine as a testing ground for the weapons, warning that the same threat is now facing Israel, Gulf states, and US forces had been honed through years of attacks on Ukrainian civilians.

"We had a terrible experience with these drones," Zelenskyy told The Jerusalem Post, describing the years-long barrage Ukraine has faced. "We had 350 or 500 Iranian drones, Shaheds, each day, each day and night."

His message, repeated throughout the interview, was straightforward: The threat now confronting the Middle East did not emerge overnight. Ukraine, he said, saw it first, endured it first, and paid for the lessons learned in civilian blood.

Zelensky said Ukraine tried early on to stop Iran from supplying Shahed drones to Russia, warning Tehran directly that the weapons would be used against civilians.

"We asked them not to give weapons because otherwise, if they will give them weapons, like Shahed, they will kill our civilians," he said. "'And you will be allies,'" he told Iran.

According to Zelenskyy, Iranian officials denied they were truly siding with Russia and tried to minimize the scale of the transfer.

"They said that 'Okay... we are not allies in this,'" he recalled. He said the Iranians told Ukraine: "'We sold Russians this part of Shaheds, and it will be 1,200 or 1,300, and that"s all.' But it was not true. They lied, of course."

That early phase, he said, quickly grew into something much larger.