Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO. Her new book, “The Undersea War,” is out later this year. Ukraine is on a maritime roll, hitting all manner of Russian-linked merchant ships with its drones.
Enabled by technological developments that have made unmanned aerial vehicles extremely accurate across long distances, the Ukrainian campaign is a shift that has caused Russia significant harm — harm that it’s now trying to prevent by increasing protection of its merchant vessels. But the novel attacks are also opening a phase of geopolitical crisis where merchant vessels at large are facing the risk of drone attacks. That, in turn, risks causing a maritime arms race.
A remarkable chain of events began in early July: Ukrainian drones started hitting Russian-linked merchant vessels in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov on an almost daily basis. They had struck the occasional shadow vessel in the Mediterranean or Russian oil installations and oil terminals before that, but this campaign was different; several ships were being struck each day. The culmination was a remarkable 172 ships hit in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov within the course of just 12 days.
In fact, Ukraine reported attacks on 15 Russian shadow vessels, including seven tankers and five dry cargo ships, over the course of one night alone. These attacks then continued, with Ukraine attacking all manner of Russian-linked ships — primarily tankers but others too. In truth, some of the targets have not been shadow vessels, as the illegal fleet primarily operates in the Baltic Sea where ships carrying Russian oil above the price cap traverse to reach their destinations.
In the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, far from the Western coastal countries that have imposed the price cap, Russian cargo doesn’t require such workarounds. (These vessels, though, still serve Moscow’s war effort, transporting goods to Crimea and other Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.) Named MoLoCHKa — a Ukrainian acronym that translates to “Moscow will fall because of Crimea” — the Ukrainian military’s campaign against Russian-linked shipping has been a rude awakening for Moscow, which has had to move drone units from other duties to protect merchant shipping instead. According to Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces Commander, Robert Brovdi, Moscow has had to deploy up to 200 drone-operator groups to ship-protection duties. It has also begun equipping oil tankers with anti-drone technology, reported the Financial Times.
But some ships that have nothing to do with Russia or Ukraine are also finding themselves caught in the middle of this drone battle. To be sure, Ukraine’s drone attacks are extremely precise, which means there is little risk that a drone intended to hit one vessel ends up hitting another. Still, tankers and other ships now operate in a world where they may accidentally become drone targets — not only because of a mistake Ukraine could make but because of the risk that Russia could decide to use drones against merchant shipping to harm Ukraine and its Western allies.
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