Former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov announced a plan to build a private-sector robot army during IT Arena 2026 in Lviv. He stated that drones currently handle more than 95 percent of all target engagements and aims to expand this role to full battlefield robotics. Ukraine now hosts over 700 drone manufacturers, and the nation has long served as a testing ground for AI-powered warfare. Combat data from these operations has even become an export product, with the United Kingdom acting as the first buyer. Fedorov intends to create an ecosystem involving private defense tech firms, where he will invest in companies and launch his own projects. He plans to test working systems with the military at scale, writing on Telegram that robots should fight, not people. Whether these machines will make independent attack decisions remains unclear, though similar autonomy reportedly exists in current drone operations. The initiative functions partly as psychological warfare to intimidate Russia and attract investors. The humanoid robots featured in his promotional trailer appear less battle-ready than existing drones and may lack practical military sense. This aggressive video public relations campaign mirrors a 2018 film by the Future of Life Institute which warned against autonomous combat robots rather than promoting them. The shift from debating UN bans on autonomous weapons to launching a private combat robot initiative shows how quickly the ground has moved on autonomous weaponry.
- Fedorov’s website is titled “Army of Robots”
- The UK purchased AI combat data before any other nation
- Humanoid robots in the trailer are not yet battle-ready
