In the shadow of a grinding war of attrition, Ukraine has quietly assembled a naval force that operates not along the water’s surface but beneath it and above it, commanded by a generation of officers who reached adulthood after the Soviet Union’s collapse. This transformation marks a fundamental shift in how a smaller nation challenges a dominant maritime power, relying on unmanned systems rather than traditional warships. At the center of this effort is Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, born in 1986, who heads Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate, known by its Ukrainian acronym HUR.
Budanov has supervised numerous naval drone operations, including the high-profile attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge. Inside the corridors of power in Kyiv, he is regarded as a figure who merges the instincts of a spymaster with the operational urgency of a wartime commander.
A New Command Structure for Drone Warfare
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, born in 1978 and in office since 2019, has made naval drone warfare a priority for Ukraine’s war effort. In February 2024, he announced the creation of a dedicated Unmanned Systems Forces. This new branch integrates drone units from the army, navy, and intelligence services, reflecting the growing importance of unmanned operations across all domains.
Colonel Vadym Sukharevskyi was appointed in February 2024 to command these forces. His task is to coordinate the disparate drone programmes that have emerged from various branches of the Ukrainian military, ensuring that land, air, and sea drones work in concert.
Before this formal structure, the naval drone programme itself was developed under the leadership of Oleksiy Danilov, the former secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. Danilov left his post in March 2024, but his imprint on the programme remains significant, as the early direction he provided continues to shape operations. The emergence of the Unmanned Systems Forces under Sukharevskyi signals that Ukraine intends to deepen its investment in drone warfare across all domains—land, air, and sea. This institutional commitment goes beyond ad hoc improvisation and suggests a long-term strategic shift in how Ukraine conducts military operations.
It also places Ukraine at the forefront of asymmetric naval tactics, a development that defense analysts worldwide are watching closely.
Intelligence, Precision, and Pressure on the Black Sea Fleet
On the Russian side, the pressure has been unrelenting. Admiral Viktor Sokolov, who has commanded the Black Sea Fleet since September 2022, has been a specific target of Ukrainian strikes.
In September 2023, Ukrainian forces launched a missile attack on the fleet’s headquarters. Sokolov was initially reported killed in the attack, but he later appeared in a video, indicating he survived the strike. The wider picture is one of a fleet under siege.
The Black Sea Fleet has been under persistent pressure from repeated Ukrainian attacks, a sustained campaign that has disrupted Russian naval operations and forced changes in posture. Budanov’s intelligence directorate has been a key entity in planning strikes on Russian ships.
The HUR’s ability to gather intelligence on the movement of Russian vessels, combined with the precision of naval drones, has created a new battlefield dynamic. This combination allows Ukrainian forces to target high-value assets with relatively low-cost platforms, challenging a larger naval power without matching it ship for ship. The result is a campaign that has not only inflicted material damage but also forced the Russian fleet to operate more cautiously, diminishing its ability to project power and support ground operations along Ukraine’s southern coast.
Strategic Innovation born from Necessity
Understanding the significance of this shift requires looking at Ukraine’s broader strategic position. Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe that for centuries has been a crossroads of empires.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, it emerged as an independent state. It borders Russia to the east and northeast, and its southern coast along the Black Sea has long been strategically important. In 2014, Russia unilaterally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, which housed a major naval base.
That event reshaped the region’s security landscape and set the stage for the current war. Ukraine’s navy has historically been far smaller than Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
After losing Crimea, Ukraine lost much of its naval infrastructure. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine has been forced to innovate at sea, lacking the surface warships to challenge Russian dominance directly. This led to the development of a new kind of naval warfare: using unmanned surface and aerial drones to strike Russian vessels and infrastructure. The shift matters because it demonstrates that a smaller nation can challenge a larger naval power using asymmetric tactics.
For readers, this means the war in Ukraine is not just a land conflict but also a test of modern naval doctrine. The success of Ukraine’s drone campaign could influence how other countries approach naval defense and deterrence in the future, as the lessons learned on the Black Sea may reshape thinking about naval power in an era of cheap, unmanned platforms.
