President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine is close to fielding new unmanned maritime systems capable of operating not only in the Black Sea but in ocean conditions, marking a further step in Kyiv’s rapid wartime expansion of drone warfare.

He also said Ukrainian specialists are actively working on underwater systems, signalling that Kyiv intends to widen the scope of its unmanned naval capability beyond the strike boats that have already reshaped the balance in the Black Sea.

Speaking to the UK Parliament in London on 17 March, Zelenskyy described the progression of Ukraine’s naval drone programme as a sequence of increasingly complex platforms built under wartime pressure. He said Ukraine had started with simple maritime kamikaze drones, then developed drones fitted with turrets capable of engaging helicopters. He added that Ukraine now has systems able to shoot down Russian fighter aircraft from the sea. In the same remarks, he said Ukrainian engineers had produced unmanned boats able to carry other drones and boats capable of striking land targets from the sea.

The most notable part of the statement was Zelenskyy’s claim that more robust systems are now in development and that, in the near future, Ukraine will have platforms able to operate “even in ocean conditions”. He did not provide technical details, production timelines or deployment plans, and no specifications were released on range, endurance, payload or survivability. Even so, the wording suggested Kyiv is looking beyond the immediate Black Sea theatre and towards longer-range maritime applications.

Zelenskyy linked the evolution of these systems to a broader international security argument. In a separate official account of the speech, the Ukrainian presidency said he argued that Ukrainian technological solutions could be useful in crises such as any blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. That is a notable extension of Kyiv’s message: Ukraine is increasingly presenting its drone industry not merely as a battlefield necessity, but as an exportable source of expertise for allied and partner states facing threats to shipping lanes, energy infrastructure and coastal security.

The speech formed part of Zelenskyy’s working visit to the United Kingdom, where the Ukrainian and British sides also announced a deeper strategic dialogue covering defence, trade, transport, energy, justice, science, culture and foreign policy. In the defence field, the two governments said they would continue cooperation on drone technologies, including the LYRA programme to scale up production of OCTOPUS interceptor drones and other joint defence initiatives. That wider framework matters because Ukraine’s drone development increasingly depends not only on battlefield innovation, but also on industrial partnerships, access to components, financing and co-production arrangements with allies.

Zelenskyy’s remarks also reflected how central drones have become to Ukraine’s military model after more than four years of full-scale war. In the same London address, he said 90 per cent of Russian losses on the front were now the result of Ukrainian drones, and he argued that modern warfare is increasingly being shaped by unmanned systems and artificial intelligence. He also displayed Ukrainian interception technology and said Ukraine had already sent military experts to the Middle East and Gulf region to help partners defend against Iranian-designed Shahed drones, adding that such cooperation could form part of future defence arrangements with reliable allies.

For Ukraine, the naval dimension carries particular significance. Lacking a conventional fleet capable of challenging Russia ship for ship, Kyiv has relied on asymmetric tools to push Russian forces back from parts of the Black Sea and to impose rising costs on Moscow’s naval operations. Zelenskyy told British lawmakers that Ukraine’s maritime drone systems had continued to evolve at speed and that this pace of adaptation had helped Ukraine “win back” its sea. That is consistent with Kyiv’s wider effort to turn battlefield necessity into a longer-term defence-industrial advantage.

There is, for now, an obvious gap between political messaging and publicly verifiable capability. Ukraine has not disclosed what “ocean conditions” means in operational terms, nor has it set out whether the new systems are intended for independent deployment, use with partner navies, or protection of trade routes further afield. Nor is it yet clear how far the underwater systems mentioned by Zelenskyy have progressed. What is clear is that Kyiv is deliberately broadening the narrative around its drone industry: from a wartime improvisation against Russia to a strategic technology sector with relevance well beyond Ukraine’s own coastline.

For Brussels and London alike, that message will be closely watched. Ukraine is no longer presenting drones simply as expendable battlefield tools. It is presenting them as a fast-moving military ecosystem, one that may increasingly shape European defence planning, industrial cooperation and maritime security far beyond the Black Sea.

At BEDEX, SkyFall explains the speed of Ukraine’s wartime drone innovation