The robots charged into battle through a valley in eastern Ukraine, driving over grass towards a Russian position. Essentially little green wagons, they looked like something you might buy at a garden store to move bags of soil around. But each carried 30kg of explosives.

As the remotely controlled vehicles approached the enemy soldiers, an aerial drone flew in and dropped a bomb to help clear a path. One of the robots then rushed in and blew itself up, while the others held back, monitoring the position.

A sheet of cardboard appeared above a trench. “We want to surrender,” it read. Two Russian soldiers then stepped out and walked to Ukrainian lines to be taken as prisoners of war.

The assault, captured on video last summer, shows how Ukraine is pioneering a new way of war, its leaders say.

Kyiv is trying to turn more of the fighting over to unmanned systems as it struggles with troop shortages and seeks ways to defend itself without risking heavy losses of soldiers. The attack last year, which took place in the Kharkiv region, demonstrates that the Ukrainian military can now seize Russian positions solely with automated weapons, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said this past week.

Manpower remains the most decisive factor on the battlefield, and any future in which wars are fought mostly by robots appears to be far away. But Ukraine is eager to highlight its advances to show Western partners that its outnumbered army can stay in the fight. Kyiv also wants to promote a homegrown defence industry that could help the country build security partnerships with other nations.

“It is better to throw in metal than people,” said Mykola Zinkevych, a junior lieutenant with the Third Army Corps, who commanded the automated attack last year.

“Human life is precious,” he added, “and robots don’t bleed.”

As technology has evolved rapidly on the battlefield in Ukraine, much of the focus has been on the small aerial drones that fill the skies over the front line, keeping watch and attacking virtually anything that moves. But Ukraine is fielding unmanned systems not only in the air but also under the sea and on land.

While ground robots are most widely used for shuttling supplies and for performing medical evacuations in dangerous areas, Ukraine is also using them to conduct attacks at a quickening pace.

Last month, according to the Ukrainian ministry of defence, the army carried out more than 9,000 frontline missions using unmanned ground vehicles equipped with explosives, machine guns or other weapons like rockets. By comparison, 2,900 such operations were conducted in November 2025, and a year ago they were rare and experimental.

The ground vehicles are slower and more visible than small quadcopter drones, making them more vulnerable to enemy fire. Most last about 24 hours before their batteries die or they are detected and destroyed. In rare operations when unmanned systems are used to clear a trench, soldiers must then deploy to hold the ground, or at least to replace batteries.

But ground robots can carry much larger explosives than aerial drones can, and they offer a more stable platform for firing guns or rockets.

A Ukrainian military programme that allows soldiers to procure their own weapons using an internal Amazon-style shopping site offers seven models of ground robots, out of a total of 470 types of drones on offer.

Zelensky brought attention to his country’s automated assaults in a slickly produced video released last week.

“The future is already on the front line, and Ukraine is building it,” he says in the clip, with ground robots, aerial drones and missiles illuminated dramatically behind him.

New York Times News Service