Fedorov Bets on an Army of Robots After His Sacking

Mykhailo Fedorov launched the Army of Robots in Lviv on 26 September, 73 days after Volodymyr Zelenskyy sacked him as defence minister. The 35-year-old, who ran Digital Transformation from 2019 and Defence for six months in 2026, used the IT Arena stage to open a private call for robotics firms, engineers and a chief technology officer.

He set a six-month clock on a humanoid getting a confirmed result in combat, and a 12-month clock on an assault in which robots do the most dangerous work without infantry. Wheeled ground robots already fight. The wager is that he can industrialise the next class of machine from outside the ministry that fired him, before Russia copies it.

A Six-Month Clock for a Humanoid Robot

Fedorov posted the launch on Saturday, 26 September, with a one-minute film and a site that states the team is here to replace people with robots on the battlefield and save lives. The film is concept art, not product footage: a numbered walking machine, crab-legged walkers, a tracked snake and a gun cart, all generated images. Wheeled and tracked robots already serve. A walking one that fights does not.

His press service said the project binds three pieces: a venture fund that backs teams, his own defence-tech companies, and an R&D unit that finds, builds and tests new kit. It also published two numbered goals. They are the bets against which the trailer will be judged.

THE OPENING BETS

• Six months: the first confirmed battlefield result using a humanoid robot, due 26 March 2027.
• Twelve months: an assault in which robots handle the most dangerous parts of the mission with no infantry, due 26 September 2027.
• First jobs: reload a machine gun, swap a battery, place a sensor, then move into evacuation, mines, reconnaissance, defence and strikes.
• Open seat: a CTO or tech lead, plus companies and engineers in robotics, sensors and AI.

Accounts of the Lviv speech described that six-month mark as a humanoid killing a Russian soldier. The press note is cooler. It asks only for a confirmed result. Either way the date is fixed, and the hardware in the film does not yet exist.

We’re launching the Army of Robots.

In 2022, we launched the Army of Drones. Today, drones account for over 95% of battlefield strikes, and Ukraine has more than 700 UAV manufacturers.

Now we need the next technological breakthrough: the robotization of warfare.

The goal is… pic.twitter.com/UtaDuV4LXT

— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) September 26, 2026

July’s Sacking Pushed the Robot File Private

Zelenskyy named Fedorov defence minister on 14 January 2026. He left on the evening of 15 July, after parliament accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko and the whole cabinet fell with her. Lawmakers close to the presidency pointed to a running fight with then commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi and to a mobilisation reform that never landed. Street protests in Kyiv and other cities asked for Fedorov to be kept.

On his way out he listed what his team had done and three things it had not: a full NATO-style ministry, all buying shifted to competitive tenders, and a culture of accountability. He wrote that he would keep working to beat the enemy through asymmetry, speed of innovation and organisational strength. The Army of Robots is that line, moved off the state payroll.

FEDOROV’S 2026, MONTH BY MONTH

1. 14 January 2026: takes the defence ministry after serving as digital minister since 2019.
2. 19 June 2026: the ministry opens TrophyLab, a portal of captured Russian weapons files for vetted firms and partners, with more than 115 samples, 79 categories and more than 225 studies.
3. 15 July 2026: Zelenskyy removes him. He is 35. Protests follow.
4. 28 August 2026: he agrees to advise Italian defence minister Guido Crosetto, while staying in Kyiv.
5. 30 August 2026: he announces a defence-tech fund from a working trip in Washington, aimed at battlefield robotics, jet interceptor drones and low-cost AI missiles.
6. 1 September 2026: he names Palantir chief executive Alex Karp as first lead investor in a new defence-tech company, after a meeting at Palantir’s Washington office on 31 August.
7. 26 September 2026: he launches the Army of Robots at IT Arena in Lviv and opens applications.

A private project that tests with the army still needs the army to say yes. The contracts, the ranges and the units sit with the ministry he no longer runs. That is the political risk inside the technical one.

Wheeled Robots Already Fight in Donetsk

The launch talks as if ground robots were the next leap. On the front they are already a daily tool. In April, President Zelenskyy told the armed forces to field at least 50,000 unmanned ground vehicles in 2026. Ihor Shmyryov, who heads the UGV desk at the Brave1 defence cluster, said 25,000 were contracted in the first half of the year, twice the 2025 total. A study by the KSE Institute, Brave1 and Defense Builder put 2025 UGV market growth at 488%.

GROUND ROBOTS ALREADY ON THE BOOKS

The sharper picture is tactical. Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps has been flying explosive ground robots across the line under heavy bomber drones and dropping them as far as 12 miles (19 kilometres) into Russian-held ground in northern Donetsk, in a push the corps calls Operation Vivaldi. A battalion commander who uses the call sign Darwin said no other army had airdropped ground robots behind the enemy until now. Soldiers on that front call the model Gryphon. The corps put its own score at 48 square miles retaken and more than 3,000 Russian soldiers killed. Those figures are the unit’s, not a third-party audit.

Brave1 said the Alter Ego battalion of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade took a purpose-built robot, the Desantnyk, from idea to combat in 10 days, releasing it from a bomber drone so the machine skipped the mined ground it cannot cross. Brigadier General Andrii Biletsky, who commands the 3rd Army Corps, has said the corps wants machines to stand in for about one third of its front-line troops by the end of the year. The gap Fedorov is selling is not “robots on the ground.” It is a walking machine, a private pipeline, and a clock.

How the Army of Drones Became 700 Manufacturers

Fedorov’s pitch rests on a programme he started in 2022 as digital minister: the Army of Drones, funded in part through the state fundraising platform UNITED24, which first asked donors for about 200 airframes. In the Lviv post he said drones now account for more than 95% of battlefield strikes and that Ukraine has more than 700 UAV manufacturers. Both figures are his. They have not been published as a standalone official series.

The industrial record under him is still large. A commentary from the Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw counted drone firms registered after 2022 rising from 41 that year to 132 in 2023 and 183 in 2024. The Army of Drones was a government programme with a public donation page and ministry contracts behind it. The Army of Robots has a recruiting form, a film and a promise. He is trying to rerun the 2022 trick without the seals of office.

That matters because the drone boom also taught the other side. Fedorov said Russia’s ability to copy and put systems into series production is one of Ukraine’s hardest problems, which is why the next cycle has to start before the last one is fully cloned. The site puts it in one line: the enemy has learned to scale, so Ukraine has to be faster, and the answer is not more people on the line. It calls for a Manhattan Project of Physical AI.

Karp Writes the First Cheque for a Nameless Firm

On 1 September Fedorov said he was building a defence-tech company and that Alex Karp, Palantir’s chief executive, would be its first lead investor. No legal name, jurisdiction, product, valuation or cheque size was published. Karp, in a video from that Washington meeting, said he had been inspired by what Ukrainians had pulled off and that the company could bring knowledge of the war as a product to allied countries. Fedorov has said Palantir’s software helps Ukraine defend its airspace, hit Russian forces and strike the Russian economy. Karp visited Kyiv in the first months of the full-scale war.

The 30 August fund note is a separate track in Fedorov’s own telling: not a classic venture vehicle, but a shop that both invests in Ukrainian firms and founds new ones around kit the front needs now. On 9 September, back from the United States, he said resources were in place to build what he called Ukraine’s largest defence-tech venture fund in Kyiv, plus an analytical centre to forecast how the war will move. Which of those vehicles owns the Army of Robots was the hole in the Saturday announcement. One Ukrainian report said a large private technology company would run it and that the name would come later.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The launch: Fedorov announced the Army of Robots on 26 September in Lviv and on his X account, and opened a public call on thearmyofrobots.com.
• The clocks: his press service set a six-month humanoid result and a 12-month infantry-light assault.
• The backer: Karp was named first lead investor in Fedorov’s company on 1 September; the amount is undisclosed.

WHAT’S UNCONFIRMED

• The owner: whether the Army of Robots is that Karp-backed company, the fund, both, or a brand over the top.
• The money: no budget, no round size, no named co-investors besides Karp.
• The kit: no named manufacturer, no fielded humanoid, no ministry procurement tied to the call.

Saturday’s post named no company at all. For a man who just lost the power to write contracts, that blank is the entire business model.

Russia Copies Fast, So the Bet Is Speed

Fedorov’s own line, the one that ran through the Lviv speech, is that robots should fight instead of people. He listed the jobs: get the wounded out, haul ammunition, lay and clear mines, scout, hold ground and shoot. Sensors would watch first. Machines would go in where soldiers go now.

Robots should take on the most dangerous missions: evacuating the wounded, delivering ammunition, mining and demining, reconnaissance, defending positions and engaging targets.

Mykhailo Fedorov, on X, 26 September 2026

He also said the Army of Robots is not one company. It is a cluster that will invest, launch its own projects, test with the military and scale what works. That is how he described the Army of Drones when it was still a slogan. The difference is the address. Applications go to a private site and to hello@thearmyofrobots.com, not to a ministry tender board.

WHAT THE LVIV CALL IS ASKING FOR

• Companies: defence-tech firms already building robots, sensors or AI, in Ukraine and abroad.
• Engineers: people who can move a design from a bench to a trench, including tech leads and, he said from the stage, even a CEO for this or another direction.
• A CTO: one named seat to run the technical side of the whole project.
• Capital: funds, angels and firms willing to co-invest, on top of Karp’s unnamed cheque.

The honest read of the weekend is not that Ukraine lacks ground robots. It is that Fedorov, out of office, is trying to own the next cycle anyway: walking machines, a private lab, foreign capital, and a six-month date on the calendar. Units in Donetsk will keep dropping Gryphons whether a humanoid ever leaves a warehouse. The first OKR comes due on 26 March 2027. That is the date that will show if the private Army of Robots can ship, or if the walking machines stay in the film.