No Infantry, No Losses: Drones Captured an Enemy Group

April 13, 2026May 3, 2026

Very often our military announce certain events with significant time delays. They do this deliberately for various reasons — including to prevent the enemy from using the information in time. Most likely, that’s why only on April 13, 2026, information became public that drones captured an enemy group, though that assault happened almost a year ago.

We’re talking about an operation that the NC13 strike NRK¹ unit of the Third Assault Brigade conducted on July 9, 2025, in Kharkiv Oblast. Assault groups had failed twice on this section and taken losses. They needed to destroy a fortified dugout and open paths for further advancement, evacuation, and holding positions. Here’s the video published by the 3rd Assault Brigade press service:

How the Operation Went Down

Mykola Zinkevych commanded the operation — he’s the commander of Ukraine’s first robotic platform unit, which is part of the Third Assault Brigade. They brought in FPV drones and four “Targan” kamikaze robotic platforms with 30 kg of explosives each for the assault. The first robotic platform blew up the entrance to the dugout, after which the enemy hid inside. When another complex approached the shelter, the surviving Russian soldiers reported their readiness to surrender — they wrote it on cardboard and showed it to the drone. As one of the operation participants who controlled the robotic platform recalls:

They saw the next robotic platform and very quickly found a piece of cardboard — I don’t know where they found it in that dugout. And they found something to write with too. And they very quickly threw out this sign that said “we want to surrender”.

After that, aerial drones escorted the Russian soldiers to the nearest Ukrainian post, where they were taken prisoner. At this moment, Zinkevych’s unit has already conducted more than 50 similar missions, the details of which aren’t being disclosed yet. “We’re ramping up the pace. When the time comes — we’ll tell”, Zinkevych says.

A Growing Trend

Worth noting — this isn’t the first case when robots managed to capture an enemy position, and not the first case when an occupier surrendered to a drone. The first battle where enemy positions were captured exclusively using robotic platforms happened in December 2024 near the village of Lyptsi in Kharkiv Oblast. The first case when an occupier surrendered to a drone happened near Bakhmut in 2023. But cases where drones captured an enemy group hadn’t happened yet, and Mykola Zinkevych’s unit did it first.

Initially, we used robotic platforms for supply and evacuating the wounded. Gradually, we introduced combat devices armed with machine gun turrets and kamikaze platforms carrying anti-tank mines. Today Ukraine sets an ambitious goal: robotic platforms must handle 100% of logistics, drones should replace 30% of infantry on the front. Some analysts are already comparing the appearance of robots on the battlefield to the appearance of machine guns during World War I.

NRK – (Ukrainian abbreviation for “Наземний роботизований комплекс”, НРК, literally “ground robotic complex”). A Ukrainian combat ground drone. Unlike typical UGVs, NRKs are capable of firing, mining, demining, and launching other drones.