The war in Ukraine has entered a striking new phase: armed robots are now fighting on the front lines, with human soldiers increasingly stepping back from the most dangerous positions and letting machines take their place.
Ukraine has embarked on a massive program to deploy uncrewed ground vehicles - UGVs, or ground robot systems as they're known in Ukrainian military circles - and they have already proven their battlefield worth. There have been reports of UGVs successfully repelling Russian attacks and even taking enemy soldiers prisoner. Ukrainian and Russian killer robots are even said to have clashed without humans present at the immediate site of battle.
Ukraine's K2 Brigade now commands what military sources describe as the world's first dedicated UGV battalion, led by Major Oleksandr Afanasiev, whose unit has mounted Kalashnikov machine guns on wheeled and tracked platforms and sent them into positions where no soldier would willingly go.
"They open fire on a battlefield where an infantryman would be afraid to turn up," Afanasiev said. "But a UGV is happy to risk its existence."
The battalion also deploys battery-powered, explosive-laden kamikaze UGVs to destroy enemy positions. Unlike aerial drones that buzz overhead, they make no sound to warn the enemy of an incoming strike.
Ukraine's lethal UGVs can be armed with grenade launchers as well as machine guns and can be deployed to plant landmines or barbed wire. But the vast majority of the country's uncrewed vehicles are still used for their original purpose - delivering supplies and evacuating wounded troops.
In Ukraine's 3rd Assault Brigade, UGVs now handle 80 percent of logistics operations. In the heavily contested cities of Pokrovsk and Myrnograd, that figure climbs to 90 percent. A single UGV can carry up to 450 pounds per mission - far more than any soldier burdened with full combat gear.
The decision to fire weapons, however, remains in human hands. Afghan, a tank battalion deputy commander from the 33rd Detached Mechanised Brigade, said many autonomy limits are self-imposed, due to ethics and international humanitarian law. "Robots can misidentify the wrong person or attack a civilian. That's why the final decision must be made by an operator," he said.
Ukrainian UGV manufacturer Tencore produced more than 2,000 units for the army in 2025. Its director, Maksym Vasylchenko, expects demand to surge to around 40,000 units in 2026, with 10 to 15 percent of those armed.
Looking further ahead, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine's former commander-in-chief and now ambassador to the UK, warned at London's Chatham House think-tank that armed UGVs will increasingly operate as part of massive, AI-powered drone swarms. "In the near future we'll see dozens and even hundreds of smarter and cheaper drones attack from various directions and heights, from the air, ground and sea at the same time," he said.