Zelensky also announced plans to expand the use of ground robotic systems following their deployment during Vivaldi. “We will scale it up so that, more and more often, a drone rather than a warrior carries out the most dangerous tasks at the front,” he said. The corps said it had converted Soviet BTR-60 armored personnel carriers into unmanned explosive vehicles to destroy Russian fortifications.
Zelensky put the operation’s total territorial gains at 176 square kilometers, matching the corps’ earlier tally, which included 51 square kilometers in the third phase and the recapture of five villages north of Lyman. The prisoner count remains a Ukrainian claim: battlefield mapper AMK Mapping said it could visually count 78 prisoners in footage released by corps commander Andrii Biletskyi, estimating about 90 including those obscured from view.