The Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps announced that it has completed the third stage of Operation "Bivaldi" in the Limansk district of the northern part of Donetsk region. The Boyars have regained control of 51 sq. km and five settlements, and since the beginning of the offensive, a total of 176 sq. km have been liberated. km, said the commander of the corps, Brigadier General Andriy Biletski.
The interesting thing about this case is that this is the first large-scale military operation in which the main "personnel" with combat robots. Kiev deployed them on an ever-larger scale on the battlefield.
Ukrainian units captured Khove, Ridkodyb, and Katerynivka and regained control over Karpyvka and Khovomikhaylovka. Bilets identified Khove as a key Russian logistical center of the land. "Whoever holds the heights around the settlement holds the initiative", he declared.
Russian losses during the final stage of the operation amounted to over 2,000 people, and over 250 soldiers were captured, Kiev claims.
The main goal of Operation "Bivaldi" is to reduce the risk of arming Ukrainian units in the Kharkiv region.
Robots on the battlefield
The operation marked the most extensive use of unmanned ground vehicles by Ukrainian units to date. The corps reports on the robots with Bulgarian single-shot Vulsrike grenade launchers, which fire at positions and then explode in the explosions when they reach them.
The operators control them from tens of kilometers behind the front line.
For tests in better-protected positions, Soviet BTP-60 armored personnel carriers were converted into robots kamikaze machines.
Other robots are used for mining, demining, logistics and casualty evacuation.
In the early stages, heavy aerial drones carried assault robots over 10 km behind Russian lines. In total, the machines have completed over 15,700 missions. "No one has ever used such tactics in war", the corps said.
The operation is part of a broader trend. ΠAccording to DELTA data, the number of ground robot missions has increased 3.3 times since the beginning of 2026, and in August alone they completed over 25,000 logistics and evacuation missions.
ΠIn April, President Volodymyr Zelensky ordered the army to have at least 50,000 ground robots available throughout the year, and in March, Biletsky announced that they can replace up to a third of the soldiers at the front.
ΠBefore this, the operators of the 3rd separate assault brigade took over a fortified Russian position in the Kharkov region using only aerial drones and ground robots - according to Zelensky for the first time in the war.