Ukraine and Syria pledged greater security cooperation in talks on yesterday, president Volodymyr Zelensky said, as Kyiv seeks to promote its military expertise across ⁠the Middle East amid the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Continuing his tour of Middle East countries, Zelensky met with his Syrian counterpart, Ahmed al-Sharaa, in Damascus.

“We agreed to work together to provide more security and opportunities for development for our societies,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram.

In a later post, ⁠Zelensky said there had been wide-ranging discussions with ​the ⁠Syrian leader and three-way talks that included Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan.

“We managed to discuss everything: from security and defence issues and the situation in ⁠the region due to all the events around Iran to energy and infrastructure ​cooperation between ⁠our countries,” Zelensky wrote.

In recent weeks ‌Zelensky has visited several Middle East countries, offering Ukrainian expertise in countering drone and missile attacks developed during its four-year war with Russia.

Since the war began on 28 February, ‌Iran and its proxies have launched strikes on US ‌allies and bases in the region.

Syria is not known to have any air defences capable of dealing with Iranian drones or missiles.

Russia ​launched a drone attack on Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa overnight, killing three people, including a child, and damaging infrastructure, residential and administrative ⁠buildings, the regional ​governor ⁠said.

“Overnight, Odesa came under another heavy ⁠attack by the enemy,” Oleh ​Kiper, ⁠Odesa regional governor, ‌said on the Telegram app. As well as the ‌three dead, 10 ‌people were injured, he said.

“Residential buildings, critical infrastructure and administrative ⁠facilities were hit. There is significant damage,” Kiper said.

Moscow has escalated its attacks on ‌Odesa, a key logistics ​hub in ‌southern Ukraine and the ⁠country’s largest port, ⁠handling the majority of the Ukrainian ‌grain ​and other maritime ‌exports.

Russia’s military said its ​air defence units had downed 148 Ukrainian drones over a three-hour period and officials said emergency crews were restoring power to nearly half ⁠a million households in outages linked to air attacks.

On Sunday evening, a drone killed a civil defence volunteer in Russia’s border region of Belgorod, a frequent target of the Ukrainian ⁠military, and drones also ​hit ⁠an apartment building in Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.

A Russian defence ministry statement said ⁠air defence units had intercepted 148 drones, mostly ​in ⁠central and southern areas of ‌the country, between 8pm and 11pm (1700-2000 GMT) on Sunday.

The mayor of the port of Novorossiysk, ‌Andrei Kravchenko, said drone debris had struck ‌a high-rise apartment building. There was no word on casualties.

At least eight people were injured, including two children, during Ukrainian drone attacks on the Black Sea port city of Novorossiysk, with a number of residential houses sustaining damage, Russian authorities said this morning.

Russia did not say if ⁠the port of Novorossiysk, Russia’s largest exporting ​outlet ⁠on the Black Sea, was struck.

Ukraine has significantly intensified attacks on Russia’s energy facilities, including the largest oil exporting hubs both on ⁠the Baltic and Black seas, seeking to reduce Moscow’s revenues from ​the ⁠sales of oil, the lifeblood ‌of its economy.

The area of the port of Novorossiysk is also a location for the Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s terminal, which exports oil from Kazakhstan ‌and whose shareholders include US majors, such as ‌Chevron and Exon Mobil.

Usually, when the alerts for air raids are issued, the oil terminals suspend operations. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.

Russia’s military said in the early hours today ⁠that air defence units had downed 148 Ukrainian drones over a three-hour period and officials said emergency crews were restoring power to nearly half a million households in outages linked to air attacks.

Students across Russia are reportedly being offered significant financial incentives to join drone units fighting in Ukraine, serving as both operators and engineers.

This recruitment drive is further evidenced by documents indicating that companies in Russia’s central Ryazan region have been given quotas to enlist workers for the army.

Earlier this year, Ukraine’s defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, admitted that Ukraine has 2 million draft-dodgers and hundreds of thousands more who are absent without leave (awol).

World affairs editor Sam Kiley reports from Izyum, in eastern Ukraine:

Ukraine struck the Bilorichenska coal mine in the ⁠Russian-controlled part of the Luhansk region, damaging a power substation and ⁠leaving ​41 mine ⁠workers trapped underground, a Russian-installed ⁠official said this morning.

“All ⁠the relevant ‌services are taking steps to rescue ‌the miners and ‌restore power to the mine,” ⁠said Leonid Pasechnik, the Moscow-appointed head of the region.

He said that contact with ‌the miners had ​already been established, ‌and ⁠that they had ⁠a supply of ‌drinking ​water.