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.