Ukraine’s armed forces have evacuated a wounded soldier from the front line by drone for the first time, Reuters reported. The news agency recounted the rescue of 49-year-old Kostiantyn Vlasenko in the Kharkiv region, based on his account.
Vlasenko had been on the front line since May 2025, holding a position in a trench with a fellow soldier whose call sign was Basky. They received food and supplies by drone. There was no other way to deliver them — the sheer number of drones made any movement near the front line potentially deadly, Reuters reported.
They were due to rotate out in the fall of 2025, but the two soldiers sent to relieve them were killed on the way to their position. Two more soldiers sent to retrieve their bodies were then killed. Vlasenko said that was when he realized that “no one would get out anymore.”
In mid-February, after 10 months in the trench, Vlasenko and Basky were forced to abandon their position because it had flooded. They moved into a partially destroyed school building. One day, when they went out to collect a package of food and clothing dropped by their fellow soldiers, a Russian reconnaissance drone spotted them. Another drone then struck their position. Basky, who turned 50 that day, was killed.
The blast shattered Vlasenko’s left foot and left his right leg broken and twisted. He managed to crawl into shelter — a pit measuring about 80 by 60 centimeters beneath a metal boiler used to heat the school.
Vlasenko said his left foot gradually “rotted away,” while a bone protruded from his injured right shin. He decided to cut off his right foot as well. “I had to amputate it because it was just dragging along behind me. The leg was dragging so much that the bone was sticking out further and further,” he said.
As Vlasenko “started losing hope,” Reuters reported, his commanders began looking for ways to evacuate him. Using an armored vehicle was impossible because of the drones, so they initially planned to rescue him with unmanned ground vehicles. But drones destroyed two of those vehicles as they tried to reach him.
The commanders then decided to try a new heavy-lift drone capable of carrying a 90-kilogram load for up to 25 kilometers. That was enough: The officers estimated that Vlasenko weighed about 70 kilograms after a year on the front line, and a safe location behind the lines was 15 kilometers away.
Vlasenko was evacuated in early October after spending months alone awaiting rescue. The day before, a supply drop brought him a harness to put on and attach to a cable, along with a phone containing instructional videos.
During the evacuation, the drone carrying Vlasenko climbed to an altitude of 70 meters. Three other small drones escorted it to distract Russian drones. Before and during the evacuation, four FPV drone crews, fixed-wing drones, and artillery struck nearby positions identified as those of Russian drone operators.
The flight lasted 15 minutes. “I wasn’t afraid of falling, say somewhere into the forest, I wasn’t afraid of that. But I was afraid of falling into the water, because I can’t swim,” Vlasenko said. He is now undergoing rehabilitation at a hospital in Kharkiv.
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