The United Kingdom will send a Royal Air Force (RAF) Voyager tanker aircraft to provide “defensive” air-to-air refuelling to Saudi jets against Houthi attacks, Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, saying he had agreed to a Saudi request for military support. The aircraft, based at the British base of Akrotiri in Cyprus, is expected to begin operating within days and the mission is “time limited”, according to BBC News, which reports it involves a single aircraft and that the support is limited to defending the country from drones and missiles rather than backing strikes on Yemen. Defence Minister Luke Pollard told Sky News, according to Middle East Eye, that the decision is about British “national security” and that “in dangerous times, good friends stand together”. Besides the Voyager, Saudi Arabia already hosts the Sky Sabre air defence system, and the Houthis have claimed drone and ballistic missile attacks on Riyadh and on energy sites on the Red Sea coast in recent days. The announcement came the same day the United Nations (UN) Refugee Agency (UNHCR) projected that around 230,000 displaced people in Yemen and another 10,000 refugees in Djibouti may need humanitarian assistance in the coming months, according to spokesperson Babar Baloch, cited by Middle East Eye.
22 Sep · 07:50
Yemen’s government said on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, that government forces retook two villages and a hilltop position in Al-Wazi’yah district, west of Taiz, in a counteroffensive against the Houthis, according to Arab News. This month’s Houthi offensive is the largest since the United Nations (UN)-brokered truce of April 2022 and has displaced 112,000 people, UN agencies said, cited by the Middle East Eye, which warns that up to 230,000 could be displaced if fighting intensifies. The The Guardian reports that aircraft from the Saudi-led coalition struck Houthi positions, gatherings and weapons stores west of Taiz, according to Yemeni government forces.
22 Sep · 07:20
Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Alexander Alimov, was denied a visa to enter the United States and is not attending the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, calling it “another unfriendly act”, according to G1. Peskov said the refusal contradicts US obligations as the UN host country and that Moscow will raise the case with Washington. Iran reported a similar case: its diplomacy, cited by TASS, said the United States denied visas to journalists in President Masoud Pezeshkian’s press pool. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov travelled to New York and holds a bilateral meeting on Wednesday with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.