PROFILE: "The Ninth" — the Ukrainian Ghost Who Hunts Putin's Ghost Fleet

The hidden identity of an elite operator

His name is "The Ninth." That is all the world knows about him. No first name. No official rank. No photograph. Just a call sign — a number — designating the commander of a specialized unit within Ukraine's Defense Intelligence Directorate (HUR) whose mission has evolved radically since the start of the Black Sea war. What "The Ninth" and his team do sits at the intersection of naval warfare, maritime policing, and economic warfare: they track, intercept, and when necessary, sink the vessels feeding Vladimir Putin's war machine.

In an interview given to Business Insider in June 2026, "The Ninth" described for the first time publicly the new operational doctrine of his unit — the use of modified Katran drones not merely to strike Russian military ships but to intercept the tankers of the ghost fleet, those vessels flying flags of convenience that transport Russian oil in violation of international sanctions. It is an evolution that transforms weapons of war into tools of maritime law enforcement. And it is an evolution that Moscow had almost certainly not anticipated.

"The Ninth's" doctrine in four words: intercept, seize, or sink

His doctrine is brutally simple. When a ghost fleet vessel is identified in waters Ukraine controls, modified Katran drones are dispatched. If the vessel complies with Ukrainian orders, it is escorted to a designated port where its cargo can be seized under international law. If the vessel refuses or attempts to flee, "other measures may follow." Those "other measures," the commander states without ambiguity: a resisting vessel "can be sunk in seconds."

This doctrine is simultaneously military and economic in its effects. Each intercepted tanker carrying sanctioned oil represents millions of dollars of revenue lost from Putin's war budget. But it is also morally complex: intercepting commercial vessels on the high seas, even those violating sanctions, is an act that engages Ukraine's legal accountability in a framework of international maritime law still insufficiently established for this type of operation.

"The Ninth" is the kind of character that exceptional wars produce: a faceless man, a mission without precedent, an effectiveness that disturbs as much as it fascinates. In the Black Sea war of 2026, he represents something fundamentally new — the soldier who is also a maritime gendarme and an economic strategist. Three roles in one. One man.

"The Ninth" fascinates and unsettles in equal measure. Fascinates because his mission is logically coherent — if you want to cut off Russia's war financing, you strike where the money flows. Unsettles because the lines between soldier, maritime officer, and enforcer are blurred in what he does. The war of 2026 no longer respects the categories we thought we understood. And "The Ninth" is the living proof.

A doctrinal transformation of a weapon system

The Katran, developed by Ukrainian firm Military Armored Company HUB, was originally designed as a kamikaze vessel — an explosives-laden platform intended to strike Russian military ships in their ports. This direct strike mission produced spectacular results: several Russian warships were severely damaged or sunk by USVs of this type since 2022. But war evolves. And with it, the missions assigned to weapons systems.

The modified version of the Katran now integrates machine guns and surface-to-air missiles. It can provide anti-aircraft coverage for other naval operations. It can intimidate commercial vessels without necessarily destroying them. It can escort seized targets to a designated port. This transformation reflects genuine operational maturity: a weapon transitioning from one-dimensional attack to tactical versatility that approaches a true miniaturized military vessel.

The limits and stakes of versatility

Transforming an explosive weapon into a maritime law enforcement tool carries real risks. A Katran approaching a tanker for interception is in a tactically different position from one charging at an enemy vessel. It must maintain a threatening presence without triggering a violent reaction that could cause unintended damage. The tanker's crew — often civilian mariners of various nationalities, not Russian agents — complicates the moral calculation of any potential strike.

These complexities have not stopped Ukraine from developing this doctrine. They have simply made it more nuanced, more demanding in terms of operator training. Using a Katran as a maritime interceptor requires different skills from its use as a strike weapon: communication, compliance assessment, escalation management. It is a new form of expertise that "The Ninth's" teams are developing in real time.

The Katran's transformation illuminates something important: Ukraine is not only inventing new weapons systems but new operational doctrines for existing weapons. That doctrinal flexibility — the ability to reimagine the mission of a tool designed for something else — may be even more valuable than pure technological innovation. It is operational intelligence at its finest.

300 to 600 vessels financing the war

Putin's "ghost fleet" is the network of vessels flying flags of convenience — primarily Panama, Gabon, Tuvalu, the Cook Islands — that transport Russian oil to India, China, and other markets not subject to Western sanctions. Estimates range between 300 and 600 active vessels in this network. Together, they allow Russia to sell its oil well beyond what G7 sanctions permit, generating billions of dollars that directly fund the missiles, drones, and soldiers killing Ukrainians.

The logic of targeting this fleet is compelling: cut Russian oil revenue, cut the financial fuel of the war. Western economic sanctions have not been sufficient because they do not apply to the buyer countries that represent the majority of the global oil market. International maritime police have neither the means nor the mandate to systematically intercept these vessels. Ukraine has the motivation and is now developing the capabilities. What "The Ninth" does fills a void that no one else was filling.

The maritime precedent and its implications

Ukraine's action against the ghost fleet creates a legal and operational precedent with no clear equivalent in contemporary international maritime law. The rules on boarding on the high seas, the rights of vessels flying a third-party flag, jurisdictional competence — all of this is tested by operations that Ukrainian naval drones conduct in waters where multiple jurisdictions overlap. These legal questions are real. But in the context of a total war where oil revenues fund war crimes, their pragmatic resolution takes precedence over their formal resolution.

Maritime law experts argue that Ukraine, in a recognized state of war, has a legal basis for extending its operations to interdict enemy commerce. Historical precedents exist — naval blockade in wartime has been a recognized instrument for centuries. The question is not whether this legal basis is perfect. It is whether it is sufficient for Western allies to support it diplomatically, even without endorsing it publicly.

The legal questions surrounding the interception of the ghost fleet are real, and I do not dismiss them. But here is what I know: Ukrainian sailors are dying under missiles funded by oil carried on those tankers. If international law cannot stop them, and if Ukraine develops the means to do so, the moral debate is settled for me. Legitimacy sometimes precedes legality.

A contested sea, a war economy to cut off

Ukraine's 2026 naval strategy has acquired a deliberate economic dimension. The conflict's early years focused primarily on destroying Russian naval military capabilities: warships, port infrastructure in Crimea, maritime supply lines. Those objectives remain priorities. But Ukraine has understood that durable victory in the Black Sea also requires drying up the financial flows that allow Russia to rebuild what it loses.

The expansion of the Katran program as a ghost fleet interceptor is the materialization of this economic strategy. It also represents a direct response to the relative ineffectiveness of Western sanctions in this domain. If the West cannot or will not close Russia's oil taps, Ukraine can attempt to do so with its own means, in the zones where its operational capabilities extend. It is a substitution strategy — imperfect, risky, but coherent with the available tools.

The impact on insurers and shipowners

The deterrent effect of Ukrainian operations against the ghost fleet extends beyond individual physical operations. Knowing that Ukrainian naval drones can intercept tankers has an immediate effect on the decisions of maritime insurers and shipowners. Insurance premiums for vessels operating in Black Sea zones have increased significantly since 2022. This rise in insurance costs reduces the profitability of ghost fleet operations. Some shipowners have already abandoned certain voyages. Others demand additional premiums that reduce Moscow's financial room for maneuver.

This economic deterrence effect may be more important than the physical interceptions themselves. Because it does not require sinking a single tanker to produce results — the credible threat alone is enough to change the calculations of the economic actors involved in transporting Russian oil. And that is where "The Ninth's" work produces its deepest effects: not in explosions, but in renegotiated insurance contracts and cancelled voyages.

The deterrent effect of Ukrainian operations on ghost fleet insurers is fascinating. A war won in the offices of Lloyd's of London, not only in the waters of the Black Sea. "The Ninth" and his teams may be doing more damage to Putin by reconfiguring insurance premiums than by sinking vessels. This is economic warfare conducted by military personnel — a rare and effective convergence.

Ukrainian grain and its route to the world

The action of the Ukrainian Navy and HUR units in the Black Sea does not only aim to harm Russia. It also aims to protect Ukraine's own exports — particularly grain, sunflower oil, and other agricultural products that constitute a significant portion of Ukraine's war economy financing. After the collapse of the UN grain deal in 2023, Ukraine had to force its own passage through the Black Sea to maintain its exports.

Convoys of commercial ships escorted by Ukrainian naval drones and protected by anti-drone capabilities deployed at sea have maintained a functioning export corridor despite Russian attempts to block Ukrainian ports. This corridor is vital: Ukrainian grain exports represent billions of dollars annually that partially fund the war effort. Attacking them means striking directly at Ukraine's long-term resistance capacity.

The dual mission: attack and protect

The Ukrainian Navy and its naval drone units therefore exercise a dual mission in the Black Sea: attacking Russian naval capabilities on one hand, protecting Ukrainian exports on the other. This duality is not always easy to manage operationally — resources are limited, and priorities must be balanced in real time according to the threats. But it reflects the growing sophistication of Ukrainian naval strategy.

"The Ninth's" unit fits within this framework. By targeting the ghost fleet that funds Russia, it contributes to economic attrition. By maintaining a threatening presence in the transit zones of commercial vessels, it deters attempts to interdict Ukrainian corridors. It is a 360-degree mission — defensive and offensive simultaneously — that few units in the world could conduct with such limited means.

The Ukrainian Navy's dual mission in the Black Sea — striking and protecting simultaneously — is the perfect illustration of what it means to fight a war for survival. There is no luxury of choosing a single priority. You do everything at once, with what you have, because the alternative is losing both the battle and the economy. It is exhausting. And it is heroic in the quiet ordinariness of its every day.

New equipment for a more precise war

In parallel with the doctrinal development of "The Ninth's" operations, Ukraine received in June 2026 Swedish Giraffe radar systems from manufacturer Saab. These radars can detect cruise missiles, aircraft, and drones at ranges up to 100 kilometers, and can also track surface targets at sea. For naval operations, the arrival of these radars represents a significant improvement in early detection capabilities — the key to intercepting Russian naval threats before they reach their targets.

This acquisition illustrates how Ukraine is patiently assembling an ecosystem of complementary capabilities: "The Ninth's" Katran drones for interception, Swedish Giraffe radars for early detection, Ukrainian reconnaissance drones for continuous surveillance, and secure communications systems to coordinate everything. This ecosystem, built piece by piece with equipment from diverse origins, is more resilient than any centralized doctrine — and harder to neutralize in a single stroke.

The detection-decision-strike chain

The true revolution of Ukraine's 2026 naval operations is the compression of the detection-to-action cycle. With long-range radars, autonomous reconnaissance drones, real-time HUR-Navy coordination, and reactive strike platforms like the Katran, Ukraine can detect a Russian naval threat and respond within a timeframe far shorter than its adversaries anticipated.

It was this temporal compression that enabled the destruction of three Russian USVs on June 24 before they reached the coast. It is this same speed that allows "The Ninth's" teams to intercept ghost fleet tankers before they retreat into less accessible waters. Reaction speed is as powerful a weapon as any explosive charge. And in 2026, Ukraine possesses that speed.

A responsibility that weighs

Behind the call sign "The Ninth" is a human being who makes decisions whose consequences can be death — the death of Russian soldiers, the potential death of civilian sailors if an interception goes wrong, perhaps the death of his own operators if a mission is compromised. This weight of life-or-death decisions, exercised in a context of high operational intensity, is what military psychology manuals call the "burden of command."

Little is known about what "The Ninth" feels. That is in the nature of special operators, who do not speak about their inner lives. But in the few words he gave to Business Insider, a worldview emerges: pragmatic, results-oriented, deeply convinced that his unit's actions serve a just cause. "If ships comply, they will be escorted." If they refuse, the consequences are those of war. It is the moral clarity of a man who has chosen his side and lives with the coherence of that choice.

Ukraine's new generation of warriors

"The Ninth" is emblematic of a new generation of Ukrainian military personnel this war has produced: trained in the urgency of necessity, forged by four years of high-intensity combat, capable of operating across domains — land, air, maritime, cyber, economic — that their predecessors would never have imagined needing to master simultaneously. These men and women are the raw material of an army that did not exist at this level of competence in 2022 and is today one of the most experienced military forces in the world.

When this war ends, what will this generation do? Some will remain in the security services of a Ukraine in reconstruction. Others will bring their expertise to civilian industries. Still others will train the next generations of Ukrainian defenders. "The Ninth" will no longer be an anonymous ghost — he will have a name, a face, perhaps a book, certainly a place in the history of Ukrainian resistance. But for now, his work continues. And anonymity is his best protection.

I often think about what these Ukrainian warriors will be after the war. Thousands of "Ninth" types — special operators, drone pilots, field commanders — with expertise and experience unmatched anywhere in the world. Post-war Ukraine will need to know what to do with this human wealth. Because men trained for war, without a peacetime mission worthy of them, can become a problem. Or an extraordinary force for reconstruction. That choice will belong to Ukrainian society.

Russia faces the Ukrainian drone threat

Russia has not remained passive in the face of Ukrainian naval drone operations. It has deployed its own electronic warfare systems to jam the guidance signals of the Katran and other Ukrainian USVs. It has reinforced the defenses of its ports and coastal installations in occupied Crimea with physical barriers, anti-drone nets, and close-range surveillance systems. It has also developed its own naval drone prototypes — equipped, as revealed in June 2026, with smuggled Starlink terminals to compensate for its long-range communications shortcomings.

These Russian adaptations have partially reduced the effectiveness of Ukrainian operations in certain zones. But they have not eliminated the threat. Ukraine responds to each Russian adaptation with new innovations: fiber-optic drones immune to jamming for close-range missions, adapted mission trajectories to avoid high-density EW zones, improved coordination between naval drones and satellite intelligence. It is a permanent technological race that Ukraine is, for now, keeping up with.

The limits of Russian countermeasures

Russian countermeasures carry a significant cost. Each physical barrier in a port is an immobilized resource. Each EW system deployed on the coast is one that cannot be used elsewhere. Each Russian surface drone developed to counter Ukrainian capabilities consumes engineers and materials already scarce in the sanctions-pressured Russian military-industrial complex. The cumulative effect of these countermeasure costs compounds the direct effect of Ukrainian operations to create permanent financial and logistical pressure on Moscow's war effort.

This is exactly what Ukraine is seeking: not a spectacular naval victory in a single engagement, but a slow and inexorable attrition of Russian capabilities and resources. Every ruble spent on naval countermeasures is a ruble not funding a soldier or a missile. And in this war of total attrition, "The Ninth" and his teams play their role as surely as any assault brigade on the ground.

Russia's response to Ukrainian naval drones perfectly illustrates the dynamic of this entire war: Moscow adapts, Ukraine innovates, Moscow readapts, Ukraine reinnovates. A permanent cycle of technological escalation where the initiative always belongs to whoever is most agile. And agility, in this conflict, clearly belongs to Ukraine. Not because it is richer. But because it has more to lose — and therefore more to gain.

An unprecedented mission in an unprecedented conflict

"The Ninth" and his unit embody something new in military history: the warrior who is simultaneously soldier, maritime police officer, and economic warfare actor. In a conflict where the lines between the military and the commercial, between combat and sanctions, between the sea and money are deliberately blurred by an aggressive power, Ukraine's response is to operate precisely in these gray zones with a clarity of purpose that few military forces in the world could sustain.

Putin's ghost fleet funds wars. "The Ninth's" Katran drones can stop it. Between those two realities lies a space of law to clarify, a space of ethics to negotiate, and a space of action to seize. Ukraine has chosen to seize it. And to the extent that each intercepted tanker represents rockets that will not be fired at Ukrainian civilians, that decision holds up morally without equivocation.

A model for tomorrow's economic warfare

"The Ninth's" operations may prefigure the forms that tomorrow's economic wars will take. Special forces capable of operating at the intersection of the military and the economic. Dual-use weapons — designed to kill but also capable of intercepting, controlling, deterring. Flexible doctrines that adapt to the realities of an environment where everything is a tool of war — oil, insurance, flags of convenience, maritime routes. The Black Sea in 2026 is the laboratory for this kind of war. And "The Ninth" is one of its first practitioners.

The profile of "The Ninth" is also the profile of a Ukraine that refuses to fight only on the terms its enemy imposes. It extends the war into spaces — economic, maritime, technological — where its adversary is less prepared. It is the strategy of intelligent survival. And across four years of resistance against an infinitely larger power, it is that intelligence that has made the difference.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

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