Ukraine’s armed forces have shared footage of what they claim is the first evacuation of a wounded soldier from the front lines of a battle via drone.

The footage shared by the 92nd Separate Assault Brigade on Monday shows a soldier strapping himself into a large hexacopter drone and being flown at what appears to be low altitude across blurred-out terrain.

Heavy-lift hexacopter

The unidentified infantryman was wounded while at his position, and could not be evacuated in a conventional manner due to the presence of landmines and intense enemy drone activity, the brigade said.

“At that point, the specialists in our unit took it upon themselves to attempt something that had never been done before: evacuating a serviceman using an aerial drone,” the unit added.

The hexacopter was initially designed for bombing runs by a Ukrainian manufacturer, and specialists had to test it to ensure it could carry a human while remaining stable in the air, the brigade said.

The rescued soldier is now undergoing treatment and rehabilitation.

The brigade’s squad leader and programmer, identified as callsign “Napalm”, said the soldier was a “hero” for agreeing to the mission, “having seen and heard the kind of machine that had arrived to get him”.

Ukraine’s Ground Forces said in a separate statement that its drone units were conducting operations that “were recently considered science fiction”.

Ukraine has this year used drones to carry out strikes deeper within Russia upon targets including Yandex data centres and the warehouses of Russian [e-commerce giant Wildberries](
https://www.silicon.co.uk/e-innovation/ukraine-wildberries-drone-631023.