Drones now account for more than 95 percent of all target engagements, according to former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. He wants to push that shift toward full battlefield robotics.

Fedorov shared the figure at IT Arena 2026 in Lviv. Ukraine now has more than 700 drone manufacturers, he said, though he didn’t specify what time period or operations the number covers. The country has long been a testing ground for AI-powered warfare, especially drones. The AI combat data from those operations has even become an export product, with the UK as the first buyer.

Fedorov announces private-sector push for a robot army

The announcement shows how the Ukraine war has reshaped the public conversation around military robotics. While nations keep debating limits on autonomous weapons at the UN, Fedorov is openly calling for “full-scale battlefield robotisation,” backing that claim with a militaristic trailer and an “Army of Robots” website for his private program.

The project would run on an ecosystem of private defense tech firms. Fedorov plans to invest in companies, launch his own tech projects, and test working systems with the military at scale. “Robots should fight, not people,” he wrote on Telegram. Whether those robots would also make attack decisions on their own remains unclear, though with drones, that’s reportedly already happening.

Fedorov’s push doubles as psychological warfare, meant to intimidate Russia and attract investors. The humanoid robots in the trailer are nowhere near as battle-ready as drones and may not make military sense at all. Still, the leap from UN ban talks to a private combat robot initiative shows how fast the ground has shifted on autonomous weapons. This kind of aggressive video PR isn’t new. Almost nine years ago, the Future of Life Institute released “Slaughterbots”, a film just as dramatic but with the opposite goal: warning against autonomous combat robots.