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Maduro, Iran FM Discuss Defense Against 'External Pressures'

This handout picture released by Miraflores Palace press office shows Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (R) speaking with Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian (L) during a meeting at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas on February 3, 2023. (Photo by JHONN ZERPA / Miraflores press office / AFP)
This handout picture released by Miraflores Palace press office shows Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (R) speaking with Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian (L) during a meeting at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas on February 3, 2023. (Photo by JHONN ZERPA / Miraflores press office / AFP)
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Maduro, Iran FM Discuss Defense Against 'External Pressures'

This handout picture released by Miraflores Palace press office shows Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (R) speaking with Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian (L) during a meeting at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas on February 3, 2023. (Photo by JHONN ZERPA / Miraflores press office / AFP)
This handout picture released by Miraflores Palace press office shows Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (R) speaking with Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian (L) during a meeting at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas on February 3, 2023. (Photo by JHONN ZERPA / Miraflores press office / AFP)

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and the visiting Iranian foreign minister discussed the need for "vigilance in defending their national interests against external pressures," according to a statement released Saturday.

The Caracas visit Friday by Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian underlined the strength of an alliance between two countries seen as outcasts by much of the international community, both of them subject to US sanctions.

Maduro received Abdollahian on Friday evening in the Miraflores presidential palace after the Iranian minister arrived from Managua, Nicaragua.

"I am sure that our relations will continue to strengthen for technological, industrial, scientific and cultural exchanges that benefit both peoples," Maduro wrote on Twitter, calling the meeting "productive."

On a visit to Tehran last June, Maduro signed a 20-year pact which he said opened "major fronts" for cooperation in the petroleum, petrochemical and defense sectors.

On Friday, the two parties "emphasized the strengthening and monitoring of projects and accelerating their implementation, as well as vigilance in defending their national interests against external pressures," a statement from the Iranian Foreign Ministry said.

"The parties also welcomed the increase in relations and exchange of views between the officials of the two countries," AFP quoted it as saying.

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7 Killed by Russian Attacks as Moscow Pushes Ahead in Ukraine's East

Ukrainian rescuers work at the site of a missile strike on a private building in Cherkaska Lozova, Kharkiv region, northeastern Ukraine, 31 August 2024, amid the Russian invasion. EPA/SERGEY KOZLOV
Ukrainian rescuers work at the site of a missile strike on a private building in Cherkaska Lozova, Kharkiv region, northeastern Ukraine, 31 August 2024, amid the Russian invasion. EPA/SERGEY KOZLOV
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7 Killed by Russian Attacks as Moscow Pushes Ahead in Ukraine's East

Ukrainian rescuers work at the site of a missile strike on a private building in Cherkaska Lozova, Kharkiv region, northeastern Ukraine, 31 August 2024, amid the Russian invasion. EPA/SERGEY KOZLOV
Ukrainian rescuers work at the site of a missile strike on a private building in Cherkaska Lozova, Kharkiv region, northeastern Ukraine, 31 August 2024, amid the Russian invasion. EPA/SERGEY KOZLOV

Russian shelling in the town of Chasiv Yar on Saturday killed five people, as Moscow’s troops pushed ahead in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
The attack struck a high-rise building and a private home, said regional Gov. Vadym Filaskhin, who said the victims were men aged 24 to 38. He urged the last remaining residents to leave the front-line town, which had a pre-war population of 12,000.
“Normal life has been impossible in Chasiv Yar for more than two years,” Filaskhin wrote on social media. “Do not become a Russian target — evacuate.” A further two people were killed by Russian shelling in the Kharkiv region. One victim was pulled from the rubble of a house in the village of Cherkaska Lozova, said Gov. Oleh Syniehubov, while a second woman died of her wounds while being transported to a hospital.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said it captured the town of Pivnichne, also in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. The Associated Press could not independently verify the claim.
Russian forces have been driving deeper into the partly occupied eastern region, the total capture of which is one of the Kremlin’s primary ambitions. Russia’s army is closing in on Pokrovsk, a critical logistics hub for the Ukrainian defense in the area.
At the same time, Ukraine has sent its forces into Russia’s Kursk region in recent weeks in the largest incursion onto Russian soil since World War II. The move is partly an effort to force Russia to draw troops away from the Donetsk front.
Elsewhere, the number of wounded following a Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Friday continued to rise.
Six people were killed, including a 14-year-old girl, when glide bombs struck five locations across the city, said regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov. Writing on social media Saturday, he said that the number of injured had risen from 47 to 96.
Syniehubov also confirmed that the 12-story apartment block that was hit by one bomb strike, setting the building ablaze and trapping at least one person on an upper floor, would be partly demolished.
Ukrainian officials have previously pointed to the Kharkiv strikes as further evidence that Western partners should scrap restrictions on what the Ukrainian military can target with donated weapons.
In an interview with CNN on Friday, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said that Kyiv had presented Washington with a list of potential long-range targets within Russia for its approval. “I hope we were heard,” he said.
He also denied speculation that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ’s decision to dismiss the commander of the country’s air force Friday was directly linked to the destruction of an F-16 warplane that Ukraine received from its Western partners four days earlier.
The order to dismiss Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk was published on the presidential website minutes before an address which saw Zelenskyy stress the need to “take care of all our soldiers.”
“This is two separate issues,” said Umerov. “At this stage, I would not connect them.”
The number of injured also continued to rise in the Russian border region of Belgorod, where five people were killed Friday by Ukrainian shelling, said Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov. He said Sunday that 46 people had been injured, of whom 37 were in the hospital, including seven children. Writing on social media, Gladkov also said that two others had been injured in Ukrainian shelling across the region.