A ground-based robotic system and a reconnaissance drone have most likely saved the lives of a 77-year-old woman who was trying to walk away from the front from Liman, in the Donbas region. When the Ukrainian Army found her, the woman was walking slowly, alone and with the only help of two canes, along a road between shell craters and the bodies of deceased neighbors. As reported by the 3rd Ukrainian Army Corps and pick up Ukrainian media, the evacuation was carried out by soldiers of the unmanned ground systems unit Cerberus.
Initially, a reconnaissance drone located the woman moving as best she could under her own power. Ukrainian soldiers used a UGVacronym for unmanned land vehicle, for get to her and be able to get her away from danger. In order to avoid scaring the old woman and so that she would not think that the intention was hostile, They placed a blanket on the UGV on which they wrote the message ‘Grandma, get on!’.
In the video released, you can see how The woman hesitates at first when she sees the drone, and then approaches and gets on the platform. The reconnaissance drone served to coordinate the rescue with the soldier controlling the UGV. The video ends with the platform reaching a soldiers’ post, where they take care of the old woman and transport her away from the front.
🇺🇦 “Operation: Save Grandma”: Ukrainian soldiers spotted an elderly woman walking along a heavily shelled road in the Lyman district through drone footage.
“She was walking among shell craters and the bodies of her fellow villagers with no hope of survival, until a robot came… pic.twitter.com/OOdaRdVipO
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) April 27, 2026
According to the statement from the 3rd Army Corps, the evacuated woman He had lived in his house for 53 years before it was destroyed by Russian forces.
She was not the only civilian in the area which has been assisted by drones for its safety. Three other civilians who were trying to leave on foot were escorted by drones to an evacuation point. From there, troops of the 1st Mechanized Battalion They were transported out of the combat zone in an armored vehicle and handed over to civil-military cooperation units.
Although ground robots are mainly being used in war For logistics, it is increasingly common to see them in evacuation tasks. Last December, a similar platform was used to extract a wounded Ukrainian soldier who had been trapped under Russian fire, the ministry said at the time. Joint Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian National Police ‘Lut’.
The soldier, member of the assault brigade ‘Luhansk’had fallen into a Russian ambush and suffered serious injuries during a bombing raid. Despite this, he managed to continue retreating while responding to enemy fire. Later it was evacuated with the help of a ground robot and troops from the 100th Brigade.
‘The evacuation of the wounded man was extremely difficult, enemy drones were flying over the area and any movement under fire could have been fatal. However, Leaving a partner behind was not an option.‘, stated the ‘Lut’ Brigade.
More recently, on April 7, the First Separate Medical Battalion of Ukraine successfully carried out, using unmanned ground vehicles, six casualty evacuation missions in a single day.