A Spanish legal general observes footage showing drones loaded with grenades striking soldiers sprinting across grassy fields, or wounded fighters trying to shelter among trees. He notes, and this is echoed by many analysts, that it is difficult to accept harm when it seems unnecessary to continue inflicting it, yet a combatant remains a target, and war is not a humane arena.
The war in Ukraine has become cruelly modern with the increasing use of robots that amplify fatalities. Drones have introduced a stark, unvarnished detail to the front. Experts call this the MEDEVAC impossibility, shorthand for Medical Evacuation withheld by the enemy or the environment.
During World War II, in Vietnam, Bosnia, Iraq, and even Syria, wounded soldiers were moved away from the combat zone. In the Ukrainian front, swarmed by thousands of drones, doing so in daylight and without prior agreement could be a suicide mission.
Impossible Evacuation
What is happening is the denial of MEDEVAC. The war unleashed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may end without clear figures, a truth that Juan Luis Chulilla, owner of the defense electronics firm Red Team Shield, describes as a tribute in blood to drones.
There is a noticeable impact on troop morale when MEDEVAC is denied. A key psychological pillar for soldiers in the line of fire is the knowledge that potent medical help will be available if they are wounded, as a Ukrainian infantry instructor in the Toledo training grounds once told El Periódico de Catalunya. Stabilizing injuries remains crucial.
A Russian campaign piece praises the warrior’s faith with a symbolic belligerent under a Byzantine Christ, a campaign that blends propaganda with reverence. In social media, such images accompany calls to defend the homeland and frame the conflict as a moral struggle.
Russian war propaganda alternates between bold claims and melancholy tones. One post shows powerful soldiers alongside delicate women with slogans about victory, while another post honors military medical staff. A drawing depicts a wounded person on a stretcher receiving care, captioned that effective medical rescue boosts morale and duty in equal measure.
No Golden Hour
Drones do not care for slogans. For the machine and the operator, a squad of soldiers hidden in grass is a living target, even if many lie wounded from prior bombardments, mines, or artillery strikes.
The disappearing golden hour is a frequent refrain. The drones’ patrol strips away time for the wounded, skewering the ability to reach a hospital within the crucial sixty minutes after injury, with a caveat that night operations may alter the risk landscape due to limited visibility.
In the Ukrainian front lines, Claymore-style directional mines carried by drones are common. These American-origin devices, with several Soviet-inspired versions, throw a cone of shrapnel up to fifty meters, creating a deadly kill zone.
A veteran with experience in mechanized infantry, now a senior defense official, notes that Ukraine’s war feels unlike World War I not only because of the drones but also because there is a need to reclaim wounded positions after drone raids. Both sides tend to place wounded in basements and holes to hide from the drones, a grim tactic that marks the battlefield in a new way.
Spanish military sources converge on a common observation: drone-launched anti-personnel mines account for most casualties among Russian fighters aged over thirty-five.
Lawless Robots
Both sides continuously share drone footage of attacks aimed at breaking morale, a stark display of the animosity that now dominates the war. This material has prompted a rereading of legal writings on aggression and a reflection on how distance intensifies cruelty and how basic impulses of pacification may fail in modern conflict. The need for clearer legal boundaries around robots and remote warfare has become a topic of serious discussion.
Since the Ukraine invasion, there has been debate among international legal authorities about whether robots used in war should be governed by existing norms or require new customary rules. Generally, a drone striking a group of wounded people is not automatically a war crime if the group or vehicle is not marked as a medical transport. The same immunities apply to prohibited medical transports, unless the escorting team actively participates in hostilities, according to a jurist consulted for this assessment.
Both the jurist and other experts agree that firing on defenseless personnel is illegal. Artillery tends to be indiscriminate because it does not see, while many drones do perceive their targets. In most combat groups, there is always at least one member who administers first aid while continuing to fight, and the drone then acts on the perceived target in view of the medical flag not being clearly established.
These reflections underscore a broader question about the evolving rules of engagement in modern warfare and how international law might adapt to robotic and autonomous systems that determine the battlefield in new ways.