A view from a camera on board a MAUL ground drone shows an explosion in front of the vehicle during a mission to extract a wounded Ukrainian soldier from Russian-occupied territory, as shared by the Ukrainian Ground Forces 1st Medical Battalion. Handout/Ukrainian Ground Forces 1st Medical Battalion

Ukrainian forces managed to rescue one of their own recently — a wounded soldier trapped for 33 days behind enemy lines — by sending a casket-shaped, off-road robot to navigate a perilous route dodging landmines and drone attacks to retrieve him.

After six failed rescue attempts, the 1st Medical Battalion of the Ukrainian Ground Forces managed to rescue the soldier from Russian-occupied territory in the east of the country.

The remotely operated robot, which looks like an armored casket mounted on an ATV frame and wheels, traveled a total of about 40 miles for the mission — almost 23 of them with a damaged wheel after it struck a landmine. The mission took just under six hours, according to the battalion, which shared a video of the operation on social media this week.

"We received a request from an adjacent unit to try to evacuate their soldier," the medical battalion's head of communications Volodymyr Koval told CBS News on Friday. "They had already made four attempts on their own, but they were unsuccessful. They turned to us because we had the appropriate capabilities."

The most important of those capabilities was the robot, a MAUL ground drone originally developed by the medical battalion precisely for the purpose of extracting wounded or trapped soldiers.

"The soldier's location was known, there was contact with him, food was being sent to him from the air — logistics were carried out by aerial drones. We began to develop a plan for his evacuation and study the route," Koval told CBS News. "Two attempts were unsuccessful due to enemy mines and drones waiting on the ground in ambush on the roads. The seventh mission was successful, despite the fact that the drone hit an anti-personnel mine."

The robot reached the soldier, who climbed into the personnel capsule, laid down and closed himself inside. But the rolling rescue unit then came under attack by a Russian drone on its way back toward the battle line. The soldier survived thanks to the armored capsule.

Military medics provided first aid and stabilized the soldier as soon as the robot reached Ukrainian-controlled territory.

"The wounded warrior is now undergoing treatment and rehabilitation. His life has been saved," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video statement Thursday evening. He lauded the troops of the 1st Medical Battalion for the operation, stressing the importance of such lifesaving missions and battlefield innovations.

"We will scale up exactly this kind of technological backbone for our army — more ground robotic systems operating at the front, more drones of all types, and increased deliveries of modern solutions that help achieve results in combat, in providing supplies for our combat units, and in evacuating our wounded warriors," Zelenskyy said.

Koval told CBS News it was not the first and would likely not be the last ground-based drone evacuation carried out by the battalion.

"This is simply a special story of perseverance that carries an important message for the military and society. We are actively trying to implement unmanned evacuation from the battlefield, directly from the line of combat contact. This is the main task of our unit," he said. "Evacuation is now very difficult due to the high density of fire, which is visible in the video. But every Ukrainian soldier must know that they will fight for him, that they will try to save him. This is what we wanted to show by telling this story."

The MAUL robot used in the operation was originally designed by the 1st Medical Battalion, but is now made and sold by Ukrainian defense company DevDroid, which bought the license to the design.

According to the battalion, the MAUL robot "is an evacuation platform powered by an internal combustion engine, which allows it to reach speeds of up to 70 kph (43 mph). It has a special armored capsule to protect the wounded and special metal wheels that do not contain air."

The units are now sold by DevDroid for about $19,000 each.

Earlier this year, the Ukrainian National Guard's 13th Khartia Brigade used a Zmiy-500 ground drone, a simpler robot that offers less protection to the person riding it, to evacuate a wounded soldier while simultaneously delivering supplies to the front line, according to a social media post by the brigade.

The drone covered more than 20 miles and completed the operation without incident, the brigade said.


The MAUL ground drone, designed by the 1st Medical Battalion of the Ukrainian Ground Forces for troop extraction, is seen in a photo provided by the battalion. Handout/Ukrainian Ground Forces

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