Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense shared a video in a tweet on Friday, taken from the vantage point of the drone and purportedly showed a Russian soldier walking in a grassy area with his hands up after surrendering.
In the latest example of a flesh-and-blood soldier surrendering to a plastic-and-metal robot, a Russian soldier apparently somewhere in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region dropped his weapon and raised his hands when a quadcopter-style drone belonging to the Ukrainian army’s 54th Mechanized Brigade appeared overhead.
Hands in the air, the Russian soldier followed the drone toward Ukrainian lines.
“Drones are the fiercest enemies of the occupiers,” the Ukrainian defense ministry crowed on social media. “But it turns out, not of all of them. This one took into captivity an occupier that realized that surrender is a chance to survive.”
Ukrainian forces in Kherson Oblast in southern Ukraine reportedly fitted a drone with a loudspeaker and broadcast an appeal to surrender, apparently during the Ukrainian counteroffensive that kicked off in the oblast in late August.
Three Russians threw down their weapons and threw up their hands.
“This shows how drones can be used not only to save Ukrainian lives but also to capture Russian soldiers,”
a Ukrainian drone operator told Ukrainian World Congress.
Ten weeks later, that solitary Russian followed a Ukrainian quadcopter into captivity. Given the increasing rate at which starving Russian draftees are giving up and turning themselves in to the Ukrainians, it wouldn’t be shocking if drones in coming weeks and months round up a lot more POWs.
Sources:Twitter; Forbes;