Robot counterattack! Ukraine rolls gun-‘bots into brutal Pokrovsk battle.
Fighting hard to roll back a dangerous Russian incursion around Pokrovsk, in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, the Ukrainian army’s 93rd Mechanized Brigade had a little help—from gun-armed ground robots.
“Ground-based robotic assault systems were used to liberate Ukrainian territories,” the brigade reported. “The robots, equipped with machine guns, fired at the enemy concentration, approaching practically at close range.”
It’s not an isolated incident. All along the 1,100-km front of Russia’s 42-month wider war on Ukraine, more Ukrainian units are deploying ground robots to assist, and in some cases replace, increasingly precious human troops. “These robots are entering logistics, evacuations, mine-clearing and even combat roles,” American-Ukrainian war correspondent David Kirichenko explained.
The 93rd Mechanized Brigade is part of a powerful Ukrainian force counterattacking around Pokrovsk a week after Ukrainian observers confirmed a dangerous Russian infiltration in the sector.
Marching right past empty Ukrainian trenches—an alarmingly common problem as the Ukrainian military struggles with serious manpower shortage—Russian infantry from the 51st Combined Arms Army infiltrated 15 km north of the porous front line and then pivoted west toward the village of Dobropillya, which lies 16 north of Pokrovsk and sits astride the T0515 road, one of two main supply routes into Pokrovsk.
The Russian infiltration, involving potentially thousands of troops from multiple battalions, was “aimed at completing the encirclement of the town of Pokrovsk and possibly Dobropillya, in order to compel Ukrainian forces to withdraw,” the pro-Ukraine Conflict Intelligence Team noted.
It failed. This week, the Ukrainian national guard’s 1st Azov Corps rushed toward Pokrovsk and counterattacked. Army and air-assault brigades joined in as the Azov guardsmen cut across the 15-km-deep Russian salient in at least two places.
Search and strike
“Our search-and-strike operations have cleared the enemy” from six villages, the 1st Azov Corps announced. The multi-brigade corps, which at full strength can deploy tens of thousands of troops, claimed it killed 271 Russians, wounded 101 and captured 13.
“The enemy has also lost a considerable amount of equipment and weaponry,” the corps added. “This success was made possible through cohesive and well-coordinated action.” The 93rd Mechanized Brigade was part of that coordinated action. It focused its attention on two villages near Dobropillya: Gruzke and Vesele.
The brigade deployed a reconnaissance company, various types of unmanned systems and artillery. A video the unit posted online depicts drone strikes on Russian troops and vehicles—and the gun-armed ground robots rolling down paved roads and into residential yards, blasting left and right with their stabilized guns.
The robots give commanders options they wouldn’t have with human troops. “The vision of front-line commanders is to deploy robots across the front, for these ground robots to take on the greatest risk and most dangerous missions,” Kirichenko wrote.
Ground robots can take the place of human troops, helping mitigate the Ukrainian military’s deepening shortage in certain critical military specialties. US analyst Andrew Perpetua estimated the Ukrainians are short 100,000 trained infantry. It’s that shortage, and the empty trenches that result, that was probably the root cause of the Russians’ initial success marching on Dobropillya.
But that doesn’t mean the unmanned ground vehicle, or UGV, operations don’t require people. They do. “Deploying each UGV mission still needs a large team to manage everything,” Kirichenko explained. But at least that team, lodged in a fighting position potentially kilometers from the fighting, is relatively safe from Russian attack as it controls its ground robots via wireless radio or fiber-optic cable.
The 93rd Mechanized Brigade’s robotic counterattack was a triumph of technology as Ukraine races to preserve a tech edge over its much bigger invader. But it also belies a major problem. Owing to a serious lack of operational reserves, Kyiv had to poach units from potentially vulnerable sectors in order to build up a force powerful enough to defeat the Russian incursion near Pokrovsk.
The 93rd Mechanized Brigade had been holding the line south of Chasiv Yar, 50 km east of Dobropillya. The Russians are steadily advancing through Chasiv Yar as they attempt to squeeze the fortress town of Kostyantynivka.

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