Ukraine captured 250 Russian troops in an extensive counter-attack using unmanned ‘zombie cars’ on the frontline for the first time.
Brig Gen Andriy Biletsky, the commander of the 3rd Army Corps, said his soldiers had taken back 68 square miles of land north of the city of Lyman in Operation Vivaldi.
‘The enemy was deceived and missed the real strike,’ said Brig Gen Biletsky, adding that his troops had feinted towards one village before heading for Nove, another small settlement whose seizure provided a bridgehead for further advances.
During the operation, the 3rd Army Corps converted old Soviet-era BTR-60 armoured personnel carriers (APCs) into unmanned zombie cars, using them to decimate Russia’s most heavily fortified positions.
Entire units were forced to surrender as Ukrainian soldiers pushed forwards, including drone pilots, artillerymen and officers.
The capture of 250 Russian prisoners of war marks one of the highest totals recorded for a single military operation, and comes on top of 2,000 Russian casualties.
While vehicles have long been converted into improvised explosive devices, new technology means there is no need for a driver to steer them towards the target in a ‘kamikaze’ attack.
Dramatic footage shows a Soviet-era armoured transporter that has been turned into an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), speeding across a marshy landscape before exploding into a fireball.
While vehicles have long been converted into improvised explosive devices, new technology means there is no need for a driver to steer them towards the target in a ‘kamikaze’ attack
Dramatic footage shows a Soviet-era armoured transporter that has been turned into an unmanned ground vehicle, speeding across a marshy landscape before exploding into a fireball
Ukrainian engineers can reprogramme old vehicles to update them into remotely piloted drones, which can drive with almost the same technical capability as if a human were in the front seat.
The vehicles are stuffed full of explosives and then driven into Russian fortifications.
Operation Vivaldi is a carefully prepared effort to recapture the initiative in the Donetsk region.
Kyiv has kept the operation secret for months and the commander said more news would follow, dubbing this update as the ‘third season’ in a four-part series.
The government sees such counterattacks as evidence to its allies – and particularly Donald Trump – that Moscow’s grinding advances in Donetsk are not inevitable and that Russian leader Vladimir Putin cannot simply wait for Ukraine’s defences and Western resolve to shatter.
Vivaldi has seen the combined use of drones, armour, artillery and infantry against Russian soldiers attempting a pincer attack to take control of Lyman, a lynchpin of the ‘fortress belt’ cities that have stymied Russian advances for years.
‘Russian forces had advanced right up to the Siverskyi Donets River, and holding Lyman as the primary defensive hub for the northern Donetsk region would have become significantly harder had they advanced further,’ Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at Ukraine’s State National Institute for Strategic Studies, told Politico.
‘Any further enemy advances would have disrupted logistics and supply lines to Lyman, complicating the city’s defence,’ he added.
According to Bielieskov, the mission’s success undermines Moscow’s theory of victory, which he said ‘hinged precisely on attempts to turn local advances in the Donetsk region into strategic successes’.
He said: ‘The goal was to create the impression Russia would inevitably capture the Donetsk region, thereby raising the question: “What is the point of the West helping Ukraine, or of Ukraine clinging to the region?”‘
Last week, as part of Vivaldi, Ukrainian bomber drones were used to drop ground robots behind the Russian frontline in a groundbreaking ‘safari’ mission that targeted as many as 3,000 enemy troops.
The attack was carried out for the first time by Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps, with Kyiv’s forces deploying unmanned ground vehicles six miles behind Russian lines.
Cameras mounted on the ground robots captured the surprise operation, which resulted in 3,000 Russian soldiers being killed or wounded.
‘For the first time in the world, during Operation Vivaldi, the occupiers were attacked by “Gryphons”,’ said Makar, commander of the NSI-13 ground robotic systems unit of Ukraine’s 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, part of the 3rd Army Corps.
Heavy bomber drones – the Gryphons- ‘dropped kamikaze ground robots more than 10km deep into enemy rear areas,’ he said.
‘Robot cameras captured the technological breakthrough – where the enemy least expected it.’
He added that the ‘unique deep-strike tactic’ was created from scratch by the soldiers of the NC13 strike ground-robot unit.
‘Now there are even more of our infantry’s lives preserved – and even more of the enemy’s manpower and resources destroyed,’ the commander added.
Soldiers of NC13, a unit of Ukraine’s Third Army Corps that specialises in the combat use of unmanned ground vehicles (UGV), prepare a new vehicle for field use in a workshop in the Kharkiv region, Ukraine May 22
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed ‘important results from our troops in the Lyman sector’.
His forces are understood to have cut off a Russian salient on this section of the frontline in the Donetsk region and surrounded Moscow’s troops in a ‘cauldron’.
Furious Russian military bloggers blamed a culture of lying up the chain of command for Moscow’s slow response to the Ukrainian advance.
The 3rd Army Corps deployed ‘combined arms’ to find, jam and destroy Russia’s defences before sending in mechanised assaults, said Art Jockey, a Russian-language military blogger known for their independent-minded commentary.
‘It’s all quite simple, at least in theory,’ the channel added. ‘If the Russian armed forces fail to adapt quickly, then the next year, even in military terms, promises to be very, very interesting.’
Zelensky pointed to the broader battlefield picture on Sunday. ‘Overall, this week, across all sectors of active combat operations on the front, our units neutralised 10,660 Russian troops killed and wounded,’ he said.
‘Every such week on the front that becomes ours – Ukrainian – in terms of the overall situation prevents Russia from mounting greater offensive activity against Ukraine.’
There are multiple advantages to transforming ordinary vehicles into zombie cars, compared to traditional UGVs, according to ‘David’, a Ukrainian engineer who helped develop the technology with the Drone Fight Group.
The cars are able to move faster than small drones, at up to 31mph, even when they are full of explosives.
They can also carry far larger payloads and travel for longer distances.
‘Another important factor is that there are a lot of cheap cars on the market which we can plug our system into and they are ready to go,’ David, whose business has provided two zombie cars to the 3rd Army Corps, told the Telegraph.
As smaller UGVs get stuck in the mud, demand for the roughly $4,000 (£3,000) system is expected to rise further this winter.
They can be controlled via Starlink – Elon Musk’s satellite internet – a remote-control system, or over the 4G mobile phone network.
This means troops can switch to alternative data links if Russia manages to jam one connection.
As well as the push north of Lyman, Ukrainian forces have also ‘possibly pushed the enemy a bit further from Sloviansk’, Emil Kastehelmi, co-founder of the Helsinki-based Black Bird Group, told the newspaper.
This is ‘really crucial, as there’s not much depth there between the Russians and the city’, he said.
The Lyman counter-offensive appears to have succeeded in ‘straightening the frontline’, he added, but overall, ‘the movement on the frontlines is still slow’.
Kyiv still faces a tough winter under constant, escalating strikes from Moscow’s jet-powered Geran drones and ballistic missiles.
At least two people were killed when a drone hit the National Academy of Sciences in central Kyiv on Monday, as Russia pounded the heart of the Ukrainian capital with some of the most persistent drone strikes since the start of the war.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 24 people had been injured in several attacks on the capital, six of whom were being treated in hospital.
