Behind enemy lines
Robots make combat airdrops, clear mines as Ukraine defeats Russian pincer
Ukraine’s Operation Vivaldi has erased Russian gains with the help of robots.
Ukraine’s military robots are dropping from heavy drones in airborne assaults behind Russian lines as other robots clear mines ahead of advancing Ukrainian infantry. The wheeled ground robots are supporting Ukraine’s Operation Vivaldi counterattack that has crushed a Russian military pincer movement and liberated dozens of square miles of occupied Ukrainian territory so far.
The Ukrainian Third Army Corps revealed a “world-first” airborne assault involving robots and drones that took place within Russian-held territory on September 21, 2026, according to the Ukrainian government media platform United24. Heavy bomber drones air-dropped explosive ground robots more than six miles behind Russian frontlines, helping the robots bypass tough terrain and enemy defenses to attack supply lines in the rear.
This is not the first time that Ukraine has used heavy drones to deliver robots closer to their intended targets. But the incident is reportedly the most ambitious robotic airborne assault to date.
Several days later, the Ukrainian defense media outlet Militarnyi reported that the Third Army Corps had separately used more ground robots to safely clear antipersonnel mines from more than 18 miles of routes, paving the way for Ukrainian infantry assaults. The same task would have typically required two sapper companies—but in this case, the robots took care of it all on their own without putting human lives at risk.
Such remote-controlled robots and their human operators already take care of about 60 percent of mines in the Third Army Corps’ area of operations, according to Militarnyi and follow-up coverage by United24.
The Ukrainian military has been significantly ramping up the use of ground robots to compensate for its manpower disadvantage against the Russian military. With the persistent threat of drone attacks near the front lines, robots are taking on increasingly risky duties such as doing supply runs or evacuating wounded soldiers.
Ukraine’s military robots are also taking on combat duties such as defending against Russian attacks with machine guns or making explosive kamikaze assaults on Russian positions.
The latest battlefield uses of such robots have helped the Ukrainian military’s Operation Vivald reclaim up to 96 square miles of territory. Operation Vivaldi has also defeated Russian forces that were the northern part of a pincer movement attempting to encircle Ukraine’s “Fortress Belt” cities in eastern Ukraine, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a think bank based in Washington, DC.
Vivaldi’s success and the fall season
Since launching in May 2026, the Ukrainian Third Army Corps operation has practiced strict operational security that has kept successful advances under wraps for a long time. That has helped mislead Russian leaders, whose operational awareness is also hindered by what the ISW described as a “pervasive culture of lying within the Russian military” about the real battlefield situation when things aren’t going well for Russia.
Operation Vivaldi’s success has also been enabled by Ukraine’s intermediate-range drone strike campaign targeting Russian fuel supplies, which has reduced the availability of diesel fuel for generators powering Russian electronic warfare systems. At the same time, Ukraine’s own electronic warfare systems reportedly neutralized about 20,000 Russian drones.
Together, such factors have helped Ukraine achieve “tactical drone overmatch” while supporting Ukrainian mechanized advances toward Lyman in Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, according to the ISW assessment. Members of Russia’s elite drone unit, called Rubicon, were withdrawn from the region after the Ukrainian Third Army Corps inflicted losses on the Russian drone pilots and the unit’s resources, according to The Kyiv Independent.
But the Russian military is still directing armored vehicles and drone units such as Rubicon toward Dobropillya in the Donetsk Oblast in preparation for future mechanized assaults this autumn. During the summer, the Russian military tested a new anti-drone protection system for its most modern tanks that saw limited success—although Ukrainian drones still overwhelmed the tanks’ defenses.
The Russian military has also adapted many of the same drone warfare innovations used by Ukraine while sometimes developing its own as it continues attacking Ukrainian cities with missiles and drones. Russia has also stepped up a campaign of “hybrid warfare” against Europe, with recent examples including an explosive drone boat turning up near a vital offshore gas site and an attempt to attack parked Ukrainian cargo aircraft with a drone at Leipzig Airport in Germany.
