Ukrainian troops have been using their ground drones to evacuate elderly civilians stuck near the front lines, as the remote-controlled “iron soldiers” continue to saturate the battlefield.
The Kraken uncrewed ground vehicle (UGV) company of the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps said last Wednesday that it had evacuated four older adults from Lyman, a city in Donetsk, with a heavy drone.
Kraken released aerial drone footage and ground drone camera clips of the operation, in which its troops relayed instructions to the evacuees through a two-way comms system on the vehicle.
The company’s commander, a lieutenant identified only by his call sign “Greek” for security purposes, told Business Insider that his UGV operators were carrying out a logistics mission when one of the evacuees approached the drone.
The woman asked for help, saying her neighbor had been wounded by shrapnel and that their party of four wanted to leave the area, Greek said.
“We discussed with them all the details of the evacuation. The date, time, place, and the procedure that they and we would follow to make the evacuation successful,” the commander added.
Kraken deployed a Zmiy Logistic, a four-wheeled buggy that can carry a maximum payload of about 1,100 pounds, remotely driving it some 10 miles to the evacuees in Lyman.
Once the party of four got on, the drone drove back another 10 miles to a river crossing, where Ukrainian troops received the evacuees and transported them by boat to a safer location. The wounded were taken to a hospital in the nearest town by car.
‘Iron soldiers’ and civilians in the gray zone
The latest operation comes after another 77-year-old Ukrainian woman was also separately rescued from Lyman in early April by a ground drone operated under the 60th Separate Mechanized Brigade.
The woman sat on the tracked system after soldiers from the brigade said they spotted her near a battlefield and approached her with a blanket that read: “Grandma, get on!”
The 60th, like Kraken, is part of the 3rd Army Corps.
Greek said some Ukrainian civilians still live in what’s called the “gray zone,” or contested no-man’s land that can be about 10 to 12 miles wide.
These frontline areas are “extremely dangerous,” the commander added.
“There is usually no stable government, no shops, hospitals, or schools, and the civilians who remain there live without electricity and under constant shelling,” he said.
Those who remain often stay because they’re reluctant to leave the homes they grew up in or are worried about evacuating with sick family members.
Though Ukraine’s government and some charity organizations offer free resettlement to evacuees, some are still concerned about the financial constraints of living elsewhere or hold out hope that the war will end soon, Greek said.
As the war drags into its fifth year, both Ukraine and Russia are heavily intensifying the use of ground drones for frontline missions that would put human troops at great risk.
These drones, dubbed “iron soldiers” or “ground robots” by Ukrainian officials, are a wide range of tracked or wheeled vehicles modified to travel for miles with cargo or remotely controlled small arms.
In April, Ukraine’s defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, said his country was planning to buy 25,000 UGVs in the first half of 2026 alone.
“Our goal is for 100% of frontline logistics to be handled by UGVs,” said Fedorov, who said that the drones had carried out over 21,500 missions in the first quarter of the year.
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