In an interview with Army Inform, Colonel Illia Petryna, commander of the 25th Separate Sicheslav Airborne Brigade, said the brigade created a ground-robotics company as a pilot unit and that it was among the first Ukrainian brigades to organize ground robots this way.

The company was initially created to test how the systems could work in combat. They are now being used for different battlefield tasks, Petryna said. Some robots carry supplies. Others are used for evacuation or provide fire support.

The move is part of Ukraine's broader effort to build dedicated units around ground robots. In February 2025, Ukraine's Defense Ministry said the military was forming units focused on unmanned ground systems after testing that had begun in summer 2024. The systems were already being used for logistics, fire strikes, and evacuating wounded soldiers.

Ukraine has since continued expanding their use. By March 2026, 167 units were using ground robots, up from 67 in November 2025. More than 9,000 combat and logistical missions were conducted with unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) that month, according to the Defense Ministry.

Learning from the battlefield

The 25th's robotic company also gives soldiers a way to test systems and report problems directly to manufacturers.

“Cooperation with manufacturers is the basis,” Petryna said. “They draw information from us about what is needed now, what is relevant at the front.”

Soldiers use the machines in combat, identify what does not work, and pass that information back to manufacturers. The next versions can then be adapted to conditions at the front.

That creates a direct feedback loop between the battlefield and the companies developing the technology.

Petryna sees that constant adaptation as necessary because the technology and tactics of the war keep changing.

“Probably, right now, no statute in the world fits how this war is being fought,” he said. “The war has changed fundamentally.”

For the 25th, the robotic company is one way to keep adapting as the battlefield changes.

Ukraine has brought another 103 servicemembers home from Russian captivity in the first stage of a new prisoner exchange, the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War reported on 19 August 2026. Most of the returning defenders are wounded or seriously ill after captivity that, for some, reached back to 2022, the year of Russia's full-scale invasion. The United States and the United Arab Emirates helped organize the swap, the headquarters said.

Who came home

The freed group covers nearly every branch of Ukraine's forces. It includes members of the Armed Forces, the Navy, Territorial Defense, the National Guard and the State Border Guard Service. Alongside soldiers and sergeants, several officers were released.

The Coordination HQ detailed the composition. The Defense Ministry accounted for 92 of those freed, and the Interior Ministry for 11. Two of the returnees are officers, the rest enlisted personnel and NCOs. Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi said his ministry's 11 broke down into five National Guardsmen and six border guards.

The defenders had been captured across the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson and Sumy directions, as well as at Mariupol. The single largest share, 72, fell on the Donetsk front. The youngest freed defender was born in 2000, and the oldest is 59.

Years behind Russian bars

The captures span the entire full-scale war. One of those freed had been held since 2022, 16 since 2023, and 48 since 2024. Another 31 were seized in 2025 and seven this year. By the same tally, the International Committee of the Red Cross had confirmed the captivity of 102 of the group before the handover, with a single case verified through other sources.

A previous swap in late June returned 160 defenders, all of them held since 2022.

Wounded and ill

The released defenders will undergo full medical examinations, receive physical and psychological rehabilitation, and obtain the state payments provided by law. The head of the President's Office, Kyrylo Budanov, said doctors were already doing everything necessary for the returnees, most of whom came back with wounds and serious illness.

Their condition fits a wider pattern Ukrainian officials have described, in which Russia starves most captives and executes many surrendered soldiers on the battlefield.

"We remember everyone still in captivity"

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the freed included men who had defended Mariupol. 

"We remember every man and every woman still held captive. We are doing everything possible to bring all our people home," he said.

The Security Service of Ukraine noted the swap ran through the joint center it operates to coordinate the search and release of prisoners. Oleh Ivashchenko, chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) and head of the Coordination Headquarters, met the returning defenders in person.