Ukraine ramps up ground robot production to spare soldiers, haul ammo — and rescue grandma

KYIV, Ukraine — She had walked for hours through the Lyman grey zone, past shell craters and the bodies of neighbors who hadn’t made it out, when the robot caught up to her. The 77-year-old saw it first as a blanket, then as the three words painted across it in an operator’s hand: “Grandma, get on!”

Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps and its Cerberus unmanned ground systems unit ran the April 25 rescue with a reconnaissance drone overhead.

The woman lived in the same house for 53 years before Russian forces destroyed it. Three other civilians from the same area were drone-escorted to a pickup point and handed to a 1st Mechanized Battalion armored vehicle, according to a Telegram post by the 3rd Army Corps.

Recon units said Russian drones saturated the airspace, making a conventional ground evacuation impossible. So Ukraine sent a robot.

The same UGV class that hauls ammunition and evacuates wounded soldiers is now pulling civilians out of contested ground — sometimes inside the same week, sometimes off the same platform.

Ukraine’s ground robots are dual-use by default.

Four years ago, that meant a Kyiv grandmother knocking a Russian drone out of the sky with a jar of pickled tomatoes — a wartime legend recounted by Business Insider .

Today, it means the Cerberus unit running ammunition and casualty evacuations on the same Lyman axis where it pulled the 77-year-old out last month, the 3rd Army Corps said.

Commanders inside Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) describe the dual-use stack as a strategic doctrine, not improvisation.

“According to the SBS doctrine, a very large number of tasks fall to SBS. This is fire impact, mine-laying, logistical missions, engineering works, evacuation of the wounded and other measures,” Heorhii Khvystani, chief of staff of the Unmanned Systems Battalion of Ukraine’s 58th Separate Motorized Brigade, said on a panel at the Lviv Drone Autonomy Conference last month.

“UGVs perform important logistics and evacuation tasks on the front line. In March alone, the military carried out more than 9,000 missions using them,” Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said April 18.

“Our goal is for 100 percent of frontline logistics to be performed by robotic systems.”

The Defense Ministry has contracted 25,000 UGVs in the first half of 2026 alone, more than double last year’s total, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the production of 50,000 ground robots for the year last week — creating a robotic ground force bigger than some allied armies.

“The main purpose of ground robots is to minimize human risk on the battlefield,” he said.

Ukrainian units have been logging dual-use UGV missions for months.

On the same April 25 operation that brought the grandma out of Lyman, the “Lut” Brigade and 100th Brigade used a UGV to extract a wounded “Luhansk” assault brigade soldier after a Russian ambush, according to UNITED24 Media .

Earlier the same month, Ukraine’s 1st Separate Medical Battalion ran six robotic casualty evacuation missions in a single day, with two UGVs covering roughly 185 miles (300 km) combined, according to Defence Blog .

Ukraine’s General Staff has credited robotic platforms with cutting personnel casualties by up to 30%.

Ukrainian commanders frame the doctrine in survivability terms.

“An autonomous solution is a tool designed to lift a human’s burden,” Yevhenii Lesin, deputy commander in Ukraine’s famed 412th Brigade “Nemesis,” said at the same Lviv panel attended by Khvystani last month. “A person can be preserved, their life can be saved, their time resources can be saved so that they can make decisions on how to apply the tool.”

乌克兰基辅——她已经在莱曼灰色地带走了几个小时，经过弹坑和没能逃生的邻居们的遗体，这时机器人追上了她。这位77岁的老太太先是看到它像一条毯子，然后才看到上面用操作员的手写着三个字：“奶奶，上来！”

4月25日，乌克兰第三军及其“地狱犬”无人地面系统部队执行了救援行动，一架侦察无人机在空中盘旋。

这名妇女在这栋房子里住了53年，直到俄罗斯军队将其摧毁。据俄罗斯第三军在Telegram上发布的消息，来自同一地区的另外三名平民被无人机护送到指定地点，并被移交给第一机械化营的一辆装甲车。

侦察部队称，俄罗斯无人机封锁了领空，使得常规地面撤离行动无法进行。因此，乌克兰派出了机器人。

同一款无人地面车辆（UGV）既能运送弹药，又能撤离受伤士兵，现在还能将平民从交战地带撤离——有时甚至在同一周内完成，有时甚至使用同一平台。

乌克兰的地面机器人默认是军民两用型的。

四年前，这意味着一位基辅老奶奶用一罐腌西红柿击落了一架俄罗斯无人机——这是《商业内幕》报道的一个战时传说。

据第三军称，今天，塞伯鲁斯部队正在莱曼轴线上进行弹药和伤员撤离，上个月他们正是从这条轴线上救出了这位 77 岁的老人。

乌克兰无人系统部队（SBS）的指挥官们将两用技术描述为一种战略原则，而不是即兴发挥。

“根据SBS（独立机动旅）的作战理论，SBS承担着非常多的任务。这些任务包括火力打击、布雷、后勤保障、工程作业、伤员撤离以及其他措施，”乌克兰第58独立机动旅无人系统营参谋长赫奥尔希·赫维斯塔尼上个月在利沃夫无人机自主会议上的一个小组讨论会上说道。

“无人地面车辆在前线执行重要的后勤和撤离任务。仅在3月份，军方就使用无人地面车辆执行了9000多次任务，”国防部长米哈伊洛·费多罗夫4月18日表示。

“我们的目标是让所有一线物流工作都由机器人系统完成。”

仅在 2026 年上半年，国防部就订购了 25,000 辆无人地面车辆，是去年总量的两倍多。上周，乌克兰总统弗拉基米尔·泽连斯基宣布，今年将生产 50,000 台地面机器人，打造一支比一些盟军规模更大的机器人地面部队。

他说：“地面机器人的主要目的是最大限度地减少战场上人员伤亡的风险。”

乌克兰部队已经执行两用无人地面车辆任务数月之久。

据 UNITED24 媒体报道，在 4 月 25 日将这位老奶奶从莱曼救出的同一次行动中，“卢特”旅和第 100 旅使用无人地面车辆在俄军伏击后救出了一名受伤的“卢甘斯克”突击旅士兵。

据国防博客报道，同月早些时候，乌克兰第一独立医疗营一天之内执行了六次机器人伤员撤离任务，两辆无人地面车辆总共行驶了约 185 英里（300 公里）。

乌克兰总参谋部认为，机器人平台使人员伤亡减少了高达 30%。

乌克兰指挥官从生存的角度来构建这一理论。

“自主解决方案是一种旨在减轻人类负担的工具，”乌克兰著名第412旅“复仇女神”副旅长叶夫根尼·列辛上个月在利沃夫举行的小组讨论会上说道，赫维斯塔尼也出席了该讨论会。“它可以保护人，挽救生命，节省时间资源，使人能够决定如何使用该工具。”