Ukraine Increasingly Deploys Unmanned Ground Vehicles for Logistics and Combat Tasks

Com reported from the Kharkiv region on May 31, 2026. A manufacturer tended to a Ukrainian-made unmanned ground vehicle holding a dummy land mine at a Ukraine Defense Innovations exhibition in an undisclosed location in Ukraine on April 11, 2025. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke to weapons manufacturers on Ukraine’s Arms Makers’ Day in April and said Ukraine had captured an unspecified Russian position using exclusively unmanned platforms, both aerial drones and robots.

Brave1, a government wartime initiative created in 2023, now directs almost 40 percent of its grants to UGV development. Ihor Shmyryov, head of the UGV Department at Brave1, said the purpose is the fast-tracking of innovation to the front line, with the highest goal being the saving of lives.

Approximately 270 manufacturers are producing 550 UGV models, and about 90 percent of the tasks robots are undertaking in the war are in logistics.

Ratel Robotics in Kyiv, founded in late 2023, has 400 employees, 25 of whom are veterans, and produces about 4,000 UGVs annually. Taras Ostapchuk, the company’s chief executive, said the firm makes five types of UGVs that can be configured for various tasks and plans to expand into turret-mounted robots for firing machine guns next year.

Vitaly, director of the 10th Army Corps’ robot operation school, uses the call sign Cossack.

The school is preparing for its next class of 15 students. Vitaly said when the war started most people were still thinking of aerial drones as wedding drones that go up and take videos for the people getting married, and added that robots are needed to perform as many of the tasks a soldier normally would handle as possible.

He said the advantage for the school is that it maintains close contact with what is happening on the ground and how the battlefield is evolving. Some European manufacturers have expressed interest in gaining access to Ukrainian UGV technology through joint ventures. Ratel robots have been captured by Russian forces.

Ihor Shmyryov said now almost every day he receives some new proposal for the application of UGV technology on the ground. Taras Ostapchuk said to him nothing is more important than the ability to save lives.