Former Ukrainian defense minister Fedorov pitches a private-sector robot army

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's former defense minister, says drones now account for more than 95 percent of all target engagements, and he is calling for the next step: "full-scale battlefield robotisation." He presented the figure and the plan at IT Arena 2026 in Lviv.

More than 700 drone manufacturers

Fedorov shared the number in posts on X. Ukraine now has more than 700 drone manufacturers, he wrote, without specifying which period or which operations the figure covers. The country has long served as a testing ground for AI-powered warfare, especially drones, and the AI combat data from those operations has become an export product: the UK is the first buyer, under a partnership that gives British firms access to a large labeled battlefield dataset. Ukraine has already deployed AI-controlled drone swarms against Russian targets.

A robot army built by private companies

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. He backed the push with a militaristic trailer and an "Army of Robots" website. Whether those robots would also make attack decisions on their own remains unclear, though with drones, per the source, that is reportedly already happening.

Signal, skepticism and the UN

The Decoder writes that the initiative doubles as psychological warfare: it is meant to intimidate Russia and attract investors. The humanoid robots shown in the trailer are nowhere near as battle-ready as drones and may not make military sense at all. The announcement also contrasts with UN talks on limits for autonomous weapons, which recently ended with calls to negotiate a ban on "killer robots." Almost nine years ago, the Future of Life Institute's "Slaughterbots" film used similar drama for the opposite goal: warning against autonomous combat robots.