Ukrainian forces successfully deployed an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) to rapidly repair defensive barriers breached during a Russian tank assault near Pokrovsk, Forbes reports.
“Many Ukrainian brigades deploy radio-controlled UGVs for the riskiest engineering tasks,” war correspondent David Axe writes.
Following Thursday’s armored attack that saw a damaged Russian T-90M tank with its crew likely dead smash through a razor-wire defensive line before grinding to a halt, Ukrainian military engineers responded with a technological solution – sending in a robot to restore the critical barrier rather than risking personnel.
“The assault was unnecessary confirmation of the offensive weakness of the Russians,” noted a Ukrainian blogger Oficer+, monitoring the situation.
Drone footage captured the morning after the attack revealed fresh razor wire had been laid around the disabled Russian tank, effectively resealing the defensive line. Special Kherson Cat, a blogger from southern Ukraine, identified the likely use of a Ukrainian unmanned ground vehicle to perform the dangerous repair operation.
Unequal Battle T-90M Breakthrough vs Barbed Wire.
— Special Kherson Cat ???????????? (@bayraktar_1love) March 30, 2025
The tank got tangled in a wire fence, dragged it a dozen meters and stopped. And it looks like overnight, ground drones quickly deployed new barbed wire around the tank to cover a potentially vulnerable spot. pic.twitter.com/DPKje2ZNoX
“Carefully driven to the front line by a remote operator seeing what the ‘bot’s own front-facing camera sees, the UGV hooks the end of the coil onto existing wire—and then unspools the rest of the coil,” Axe explains.
The wire-laying robots being employed by Ukrainian forces are described as simple tracked vehicles equipped with beds for carrying coils of razor wire.
“It makes it much easier to work in all areas,” explained a soldier from the 93rd Mechanized Brigade in an official video documenting their use of these systems.
Ukrainian UGVs can deploy concertina wire.
— Roy???????? (@GrandpaRoy2) March 13, 2025
With ubiquitous reconnaissance drones and FPVs, any extended surface operations such as laying wire is very perilous for soldiers.
So soldiers of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade are using unmanned robots for every ground job they can. https://t.co/Nz0I1VDMI7 pic.twitter.com/dguxWrJidi
Another soldier from the same brigade emphasized the practical advantage: “It’s better to fuck up a robot.”
The Russian attack, which included approximately a dozen armored vehicles, was part of an attempt to restore momentum to the Kremlin’s struggling offensive around the fortress city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast. Still, it encountered significant resistance from Ukrainian forces.
Read more:
- Forbes: What happens when you lose 20,000 armored vehicles? Russia straps anti-drone screens to 75-year-old Stalin trucks
- Ukrainian military to receive 15,000 robots in 2025
- Russian drones target Kharkiv overnight, damaging 13 buildings