The robots Ukraine wants to throw into its deadliest fights should cost as little as $10,000 each, Mykhailo Fedorov says. The former defense minister has set out the first stage of his Army of Robots: cheap, simple humanoid-like machines that would take over an infantry's most dangerous jobs, with tens of thousands needed, he said on Telegram, citing his own interview with Forbes.

On 26 September, Fedorov, who continues to work on military tech reforms despite his sudden and unexpected dismissal, announced the creation of the Army of Robots.

Humanoid robots would carry ammunition and pull out the wounded, lay and clear minefields, scout, hold positions, and strike, taking the roles that today cost soldiers their lives.

Potential need amounts to thousands

"Our main goal is to save lives. A human should not take risks where a machine can do the job," Fedorov says.

At the first stage, it will not be a classic humanoid but a simpler humanoid-like robot that can be produced quickly and scaled up, he adds.

Such a machine should perform some of an infantryman's tasks directly on the battlefield.

Today, such platforms cost $40–70 thousand on average. For mass use in war, Ukraine needs something much cheaper: the target is $10–20 thousand per unit, he believes.

"The potential need is tens of thousands of such machines," Fedorov continues.

Next come prototypes

The former defense minister adds that he and his team are already working with teams that have ready-made MVPs and are designing solutions.

"Next come prototypes, simulations, model training, and finding the right combination of hardware and software," he explains.

The Army of Robots is not a single product but an ecosystem that will unite companies, startups, engineers, R&D, and capital around the robotization of the front.

"Our task is to get from prototype to mass product as quickly as possible," he adds.

Ukraine has cracked the riddle of strange metal "whiskers" that appeared on Russian jet-powered drones striking Kyiv, and they don't appear to be some clever new sensor. They are a simple mechanical detonator, a metal tube, and a rod that, on impact, closes a circuit to set off the warhead, Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, presidential adviser, says, ending online guessing about the strange devices.

Photos of Russian drones with long metal prongs jutting from the nose had set off speculation about what they were for. The answer, Flash explains, is low-tech: when the prong hits something, the contact closes, and the charge goes off, with no sensors or electronics.

That simplicity sits against a more worrying trend: Russia is steadily upgrading what its drones carry, from the mix of warheads on the jet-powered Geran-4 and Geran-5 to a new charge designed to sever power pylons.

A contact closes the circuit

"It's all mechanically simple, no sensors or complex detectors," Flash says, commenting on the "whiskers".

It is the kind of crude, cheap fuze that suits a weapon meant to be built and spent in the thousands, where cost matters more than finesse.

Russia upgrades the warheads

Russia's jet drones, now built at roughly 3,000 a month, have become the dominant threat in its nightly campaign. The day when Flash published his "whiskers" post, Russia hit Kyiv with another round of drone strikes, hitting a school, a café, and warehouse buildings across the capital. The children inside the school were in its shelter. Fires broke out across two districts, and one person in the city was wounded.

On 28 September, Russia struck Kyiv's Academy of Sciences, which has a century-old history.

On the same day, Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesperson, said Ukraine must "pay a price" for its actions in recent months and calls Russia's intensified strikes "part of this price."

Russia hit Kyiv with another round of drone strikes from the evening of 30 September into the morning of 1 October, striking a school, a café, and warehouse buildings across the capital, the city's mayor and emergency services said. The children inside the school were in its shelter and came through unharmed. Fires broke out across two districts, and one person in the city was wounded.

Children across Ukraine now start the school year in bomb shelters, as Russian drones, missiles, and glide bombs keep hitting schools, homes, and hospitals far from the front—part of a civilian toll the UN says has already outrun all of last year's.

A school full of children, all in the shelter

A Russian drone hit a school in Kyiv's Solomianskyi district on the morning of 1 October and started a fire, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said, adding that the children were in the shelter. More than 100 students and about 60 staff were sheltering inside, and none were hurt, police said. The jet-powered drone damaged the building's facade at third-floor level, RBC-Ukraine reported.

A café and warehouses among the sites hit

On the evening of 30 September, a Russian strike started a fire at a café on the ground floor of a residential building in Solomianskyi, while warehouse buildings burned in the northern Obolonskyi district. One person was injured in the warehouse fire and handed to medics, RBC-Ukraine reported.

42 sites damaged across Kyiv Oblast

Across Kyiv Oblast, Russian attacks over the previous 24 hours damaged 42 sites and injured six people, regional authorities reported.

Kyiv is now under Russian air attack daily. On 28 September, Russian drones hit the city center in daylight, including the National Academy of Sciences, and earlier waves struck filling stations and other everyday sites across the capital.

Russian glide bombs that struck central Sumy on 29 September damaged a 19th-century church, the city cemetery around it, and a bronze statue of Christ, NV reported, citing the diocesan outlet Pravoslavna Sumshchyna. The same strike hit a school and nearby homes. Russia kept up its attacks across Ukraine over the following night and day.

Russia continues its terror campaign against Ukrainian civilians, and churches are among its routine targets, from a church its incendiary drone burned to the ground in Donetsk Oblast to one its drone damaged in western Ukraine's Lviv. Its strikes keep landing in city centers where people live, study, and pray, as when a drone hit Kyiv's Academy of Sciences in broad daylight.

The church near the epicenter

Russia struck Sumy with four guided aerial bombs. The blast damaged the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, a national-level architectural monument that stood near the epicenter. The church belongs to the Sumy Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate).

Almost the entire building was damaged, said the rector, Archpriest Mykola Holyk. The blast wave knocked out windows and broke nearly every pane.

Plaster fell and the ceiling collapsed in several places. It tore out doors and wooden fittings, knocked some icons from their places, and holed the roof in many spots. Large and small fragments of the bomb pitted the walls.

Local patrons paid to build the church between 1843 and 1851, in the late classicist style.

A cut across Christ's chest

In front of the church stands a bronze statue of Christ, placed in the late 19th century on the grave of Dmytro Sukhanov, a merchant and former mayor of Sumy. Bomb fragments left a cut across the statue's chest. The statue is a local landmark of monumental art, the outlet Tsukr noted. The strike also damaged about 50 graves in the Central City Cemetery beside the church.

"The godless enemy continues to kill civilians, endanger children, and destroy schools, homes, hospitals, churches, and cemeteries," the diocese said.

The same attack hit a school where students were sheltering, and a residential area where two people were killed and six injured, three of them children. In September, Russian strikes on Kyiv also damaged two churches belonging to the same Moscow-linked church, the Exaltation of the Cross on Podil and the Pokrova Church on Priorka.

Another day of Russian strikes

Overnight on 1 October, Russia launched 107 Shahed-type drones at Ukraine, 63 of them jet-powered, the Air Force said. Air defenses downed or suppressed 87, and drones hit 11 locations. In Sumy, a guided bomb hit private homes, injuring two women and damaging about six houses, city military administration head Serhii Kryvosheienko reported. On the morning of 30 September, a Russian strike set a shopping center in Sumy Oblast's Romny district on fire, and crews fought the blaze until late that night, the State Emergency Service said. In Kyiv on the morning of 1 October, a drone hit a school in the Solomianskyi district while children sheltered inside, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. More than 100 students and about 60 staff were in the shelter, and no one was hurt, police said. A warehouse fire in Kyiv's Obolon district injured one person.

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Over the past 24 hours, Russian mortar fire killed two men in Sumy Oblast's Seredyna-Buda hromada, and 15 people were injured across the oblast, the regional administration reported. A morning drone attack killed a 50-year-old man in Mykolaiv Oblast, and drones killed a 44-year-old man in Nikopol district, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. In Kherson Oblast, Russian attacks killed one person and injured four. Eight people were hurt in Kharkiv Oblast, six in Kyiv Oblast, five in Donetsk Oblast, and three in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, according to regional authorities.