Vladyslav Polskyi, a company commander with Ukraine's 475th Independent Assault Regiment, recently discovered two soldiers from a different unit stranded near the front line in Kharkov province.
The two soldiers had been injured during a combat mission and were being evacuated to the rear using an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV). However, a Russian drone detected the UGV, attacked it, and disabled the vehicle.
One of the two injured soldiers managed to crawl into a roadside ditch and hide in bushes. The other lay helpless on the UGV in an open area, his right leg severely injured and his body immobilized on the vehicle.
Polskyi, a 29-year-old soldier who enlisted in 2023, was observing the situation from a command post about 15 km away. To reach the injured soldiers, Ukrainian forces would have to traverse a "death zone" heavily mined and constantly monitored by drones.
Despite the danger, Polskyi decided to jump into a pickup truck to rescue his comrades. He sped across burnt fields and past scorched vehicles, without time to don a helmet or body armor, wearing only a T-shirt and shorts.
"If I were in that situation, I would want them to come and save me instead of abandoning me", Polskyi recalled.
The Ukrainian soldier drove while strategizing how to get his two comrades into the back of the pickup truck. Video from a reconnaissance drone shows Polskyi's vehicle approaching the UGV, then turning around to facilitate loading. Polskyi untied the soldier on the UGV, then helped both him and the other soldier onto the truck.
The latter part of the video shows the pickup truck speeding along the road, swerving around obstacles, and passing through sections covered with anti-drone netting. Polskyi appeared to evade several Russian drones on his journey back to base.
Malyi, a drone platoon commander, witnessed the rescue live on screen. "Everyone in the command center was shocked", he said, adding that just one suicide drone or a single mine would have been enough to kill all three people in the pickup truck.
Recounting the event, Polskyi still remembers the fear in his two comrades' eyes. "I myself was scared, but I needed to know how to control it", the Ukrainian company commander stated.
The rescue garnered significant attention in Ukraine and earned Polskyi the nation's highest honor, the Hero of Ukraine title. President Volodymyr Zelensky presented Polskyi with this award at the Independence Day celebrations in Kiev on 24/8.
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Polskyi (left) received the Hero of Ukraine title from President Zelensky in Kiev on 24/8. *Photo: Reuters*. |
The Ukrainian army is using ground robots to address manpower shortages and to undertake dangerous tasks like evacuating wounded soldiers and delivering supplies in "death zones."
However, Russian attacks on Ukrainian UGVs have exposed several limitations of these vehicles, such as their relatively slow speed and rudimentary design. The attack on 15/8 disabled the Starlink transceiver mounted on the UGV, cutting off communication with the operating team and rendering the device immobile.
Pham Giang (According to Reuters)
