The war in Ukraine has become a “robotic kill zone” in which drones dominate a 30km-deep front line where humans are scarce and vulnerable, the country’s former defence chief has said.
Gen Valerii Zaluzhny said modern warfare against Russia “has long since gone beyond long trenches, powerful tank fights and air battles", with the battlefield now “completely transparent”, saturated by surveillance drones and automated strike systems.
After four years of warfare – Russian tanks rolled across the border on February 24, 2022 – they now stretch 30km behind the front line, with the capacity to destroy logistics hubs, command posts and concentrations of troops far from the trenches.
“It’s constantly growing,” said Gen Zaluzhny. He added that the traditional concept of a safe rear area is now obsolete. “This makes it impossible to use this so-called rear zone at 50km deep.”
Gen Zaluzhny is seen as the leading contender to replace President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a future election that might even be called this year.
There is some enmity between the pair, as the general was sacked by Mr Zelenskyy in 2024 as head of Ukraine’s armed forces following tension over military strategy in the failed 2023 Ukraine offensive.
The general said the war in Ukraine had become a proving ground for a new, largely human-free model of combat, in which drones and autonomous systems dominate. “The reality is that the war in Ukraine is not only a Ukrainian story, it has become a laboratory of new tech,” said Gen Zaluzhny, who is now ambassador to Britain.
As a result, troop numbers able to operate safely in the combat zone are shrinking. “The number of people who are physically capable of performing tasks in the combat zone is minimal, it continues to decline and is actually tending to be replaced by robots,” he said in a speech at the Chatham House think tank in London.
In modern conflict, humans have become the most precious and irreplaceable resource, unlike weapons that can be mass-produced. “It takes a lot of time to restore them,” he said of trained personnel. “It is simply impossible to quickly replace such a resource on the battlefield.”
This made the distancing of troops from the kill zone an operational necessity in Ukraine, where it is estimated 65,000 Russian soldiers alone have been killed by drones. Figures for Ukraine losses are not available.
Robotic systems are no longer merely auxiliary units but are “conducting assaults” and even capturing enemy soldiers, the general said. In these highly saturated zones, “the use of many technologies, as well as people, has become a real suicide mission”.
The war had also demonstrated that numerical superiority in conventional weapons no longer guarantees control of the battlefield. Referring to sea warfare, he noted that despite the destruction of Kyiv’s navy early in the invasion, “who is really controlling the Black Sea now?” Much of Russia’s fleet there has been destroyed by Ukraine’s kamikaze sea drones.
The strategic focus, Gen Zaluzhny said, has shifted from seizing territory to depleting an enemy’s resources and capabilities.
Ultimately, as the technological sophistication of war accelerates, he contended that the preservation of soldiers’ lives should become the main principle of military strategy.
