“The Ukrainians are operating under the relative anonymity afforded by commercial shipping,” Ksenia Svetlova, director of the Israel–Middle East program at the Mitvim Institute and a research fellow at Reichman University, told Haaretz. “These vessels reach neutral waters and from there launch unmanned systems at naval ships, weapons transports or shadow fleet tankers. Because they effectively have no navy, they developed a method that is quite ingenious – essentially a form of piracy – and very difficult for Russia to counter.”
