Published in The Observer, 7th June 2026
The shell of a school, a long two-storey Soviet-era building, is highlighted in red, picked out as the target in a black-and-white drone feed. The video zooms in to show smashed window panes, barricaded with nets and debris, and just visible inside, a Russian soldier.
There were ten of them, holed up in what had been the Kindrashivskyi Lyceum, a school in northeastern Ukraine. The thick walls of the old building made it an ideal stronghold. The Russian army had been pushed out of the Kupiansk area in 2022, but since 2024 it’s been on the offensive again, trying hard to recapture this strategic location about 70 miles east of Kharkiv. In February this year, Ukrainian forces were fighting to keep them out. But the Russian position in the school posed a problem.
For two weeks the Ukrainians had tried everything: ‘Vampire’ heavy bomber drones, first-person view [FPV] kamikaze drones, and artillery. It was time to change tack. Commanders in the Khartiia brigade requested the help of its recently-formed Lava regiment: robotic warfare specialists. What they achieved, on a snowy night in February, was celebrated as a landmark moment in this war: a successful assault with no humans on the battlefield. But while this success has generated much hype around Ukraine’s increasing reliance on robotics, and the effect that may have on the war’s outcome, it appears that massive robot-only assaults such as these are not easily replicated.
In Lava’s workshop in the city of Kharkiv, surrounded by unmanned ground vehicles [UGVs] of all shapes and sizes, commander Andrii Kopach, 25, and his team of four men described that gruelling operation. The drones were released tens of kilometres from the frontline, and then operated by Kopach’s team from an even greater distance – around 60 miles away, in the relative safety of the city. Using FPV controllers similar to those of a Playstation, the drone operators began to drive the vehicles over the snowy ground. These heavy UGVs don’t go fast – an average of 10 kilometres per hour – and are designed for the roughest terrain. Their flatbed design takes up to half a tonne of cargo, or can carry a wounded soldier – they’ve had a critical role in Ukraine’s war resupplying positions and evacuating the wounded. But now, the robots are starting to fight: in the Kupiansk operation, the Thor-800 UGV was fitted with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. It was accompanied by two others: wheeled kamikaze robots carrying heavy explosives.
It took five and a half hours just to reach the school, one operator, call-sign ‘Mickey’, said. “There were many moments where everything could go wrong. Barriers, wire, natural obstacles. It was really hard.”
But the snowstorm and near-zero visibility was what made the mission possible: the perfect cover to evade Russian drones. In the ‘kill zone’, a fast-expanding area 20-30km either side of the frontline, anything that moves is targeted. Cars and big vehicles are out of the question.
“Two years ago we went to the frontline in armoured vehicles,” Izay, 30, said. “Now that’s impossible.”
In Khartiia’s high-octane promo video about the operation, the UGVs trundle over snowy fields, the feed cutting between aerial shots captured by their drones overhead, and the startlingly detailed imagery from the UGV cameras.
When they reach the burned-out school it’s already dark, flurries of snow smudging the camera lens. A UGV shines a light on a broken window and approaches. The screen glows white as it blows up. From the edge of the schoolyard, another drone captures the moment of the explosion as it lights up the snow-covered ground. Further back still, the RPG-equipped vehicle fires at the building repeatedly. An airborne drone swoops round for a better view, and the wreckage of the building becomes clear, billowing black smoke. Ammunition stored by the Russian soldiers has blown up. One section of the building is completely gone. Infrared imaging shows a heap of clothes on the floor, a little computer-game skull in pink and purple flashing over it. More dead Russians are identified in this way. All ten died in this assault, Khartiia said. Not a single Ukrainian soldier was physically present.
The Kupiansk operation was not Ukraine’s first robot-only assault. Khartiia’s first such operation took place in December 2024, and other brigades are becoming known for daring feats with unmanned systems. The position of the Ukrainian ministry of defence is that robots should replace people wherever possible. According to its figures, missions involving UGVs have soared in recent months, from around 2,900 in November last year, to more than 9,000 in March. But it was the combination of ground and aerial drones that made the Kupiansk operation a success. Ukraine is now a world leader in unmanned aerial vehicle [UAV] technology, and now produces four million drones per year.
These rapid developments have attracted global attention and feed into a newfound optimism about Ukraine’s chances. As Russia’s territorial gains slowed and even reversed in recent months, and as Ukrainian deep strikes on Russian oil infrastructure continue to catch the headlines, a new consensus is emerging, very different to the gloomy prospectus of 2025, when Ukraine ‘had no cards’ to play and was reliant on an increasingly disinterested US. Now, it’s suggested, the end could even be in sight, if Ukraine continues to gain ground and hit Russia where it hurts. And all – or at least in part – because of its drone tech.
While the Ukrainian military still relies on foreign models to an extent, the massive increase in domestic production was on display at a Khartiia brigade position north of Kharkiv when the Observer visited in late May. A small team of Lava regiment recruits operate round the clock from the fortified underground space, catching moments of rest whenever they can on the bunks lining the earth walls. As soon as weather conditions allow, they must be ready: a typical day sees three or four operations.
Both types of UAV launched from this position – reconnaissance and strike drones – are Ukrainian, made in the industrial city of Dnipro to the south. The Leleka – or Stork – is marketed as “the reliable eyes of the Ukrainian army”, and can fly for 70 miles. Outside the bunker, two soldiers demonstrated how it could be assembled in a matter of minutes, slotting the long white wings together and inserting a bulbous camera – similar to rotating CCTV – into the plane’s nose. Thermal imaging means it can conduct surveillance operations at night. Weather, though, is always the problem. It needs height to operate over enemy territory, and when we visited, it was raining in Russian territory to the north. Flights were off. The team pointed to evidence of an early morning mission on one of a cluster of screens in the dugout.
“We were searching for Russian drone operators, but didn’t find them,” one soldier, nicknamed Norman, explained. The thick foliage of early summer provides a lot of cover. When a target is found though, the strike drone is launched: a Bulava, long and thin with a distinctive X-wing shape. It can carry enough explosives to take out a tank.
Though this dugout could be detected and targeted with missiles or a gliding bomb, it’s a relatively safe posting compared to other roles in the army and the national guard (Khartiia is part of the latter).
“You can’t even compare this to infantry,” Norman conceded, but he added that his team still needs all the military competencies, with drone operating skills on top. They must “learn constantly”, training and retraining to keep up with new gear and new tech. One month of studying, then another of practice, is the basic requirement to operate the Leleka reconnaissance drone alone. More trainees are always needed: Ukraine’s well-documented manpower shortage has not been alleviated by conscription, but the hope is that the growing role of robots in frontline operations will reduce casualty figures and start to make a dent in the shortage which puts Ukraine at such a disadvantage. The new defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov is just 35 years old and comes from the world of digital advertising. With no military background, he’s a massive proponent of drone technology transforming the battlefield. Under his leadership, the Ministry of Defence has said it plans to move all frontline logistics to robotic systems. It’s all contributed to the sense, internationally, that Ukraine is at a turning point.
The view from the ground is, as always, a little less breathless. “They have great tech too,” the Lava regiment press officer said, gesturing in the direction of the Russian border, when we emerged from the sweltering bunker. “They can reach Kharkiv, we can reach Belgorod.”
The team loses up to 70 per cent of the drones they launch to Russian interceptors and missiles. The other side shouldn’t be underestimated, they insisted. “We’re developing in parallel with Russia,” said 39-year-old Norman. “We react to their developments, and they react to ours. We’re certainly not standing still.”
The reality is that all-robotic assaults are still relatively rare: the saturation of the kill zone with FPV drones makes it impossible to conduct these kind of operations in all but ideal weather conditions – like February’s snowstorm. Kopach, the maths whizz commander, when asked if such robotic assaults could be a game-changer for Ukraine, gave a cautious reply.
“Yeah, but it’s very difficult. For now, FPV [drones] are the biggest problem. You need a lot of work, and a lot of luck, for these kinds of missions – and to scale it up, you need to create some kind of protection from these FPVs.”
The Kupiansk mission, he added, was “super expensive”.
Protections against the drones will look like mounted guns and net launchers, electronic jamming capabilities, and physical armour or cages. But much of this is still to come: for now the UGVs in Khartiia’s workshop look relatively basic, and more benign than the ‘killer robot’ headlines would suggest. The team hasn’t had a robot-only assault mission since February, as a huge amount of planning is required. Their work largely consists of evacuating the wounded and resupplying combat troops with food, water and ammunition – and this is encouraged by the points system. Just one element of the military’s decentralisation since 2022, it allows units to win points for successful missions, which can be spent on new drones and other kit. Three people evacuated equals 300 points, Kopach explained – around 1.5 million Hryvniah, or £25,000. It’s far more than they’d get for killing Russian troops in daring assaults like Kupiansk. Saving the lives of Ukrainian soldiers remains the top priority for the robotics specialists.
