JP Lindsley | Journalist Profile picture
🎙️an American bringing you a war journal from Ukraine every day since 2022. | On a long truth-seeking journey that began in the dark halls of American power

Aug 5, 11 tweets

1/ Zelenskyy and Trump are negotiating "one of the strongest" drone agreements ever, and Ukraine just proved why:

Russians surrendering to Ukrainian robots. No infantry required.

Meet a NYC woman behind Ukraine's ground robot revolution 👇 ⤵️

2/ When Russia invaded, Lyuba Shipovich left her NYC tech company and returned to Ukraine.

Her mission:

"We must get people out of the trenches and off the front line," she tells war reporter @DVKirichenko at the UK's @LBC.

"Robots can do the dirty, dangerous work." ⤵️

3/ The macabre math: Russia has 3x Ukraine's population + massive oil revenues [ahem, India 👋].

Ukraine can't match the Russian War Machine with human lives. So they're building something else entirely.

A technological force that fights so humans don't have to. ⤵️

4/ Every month, Lyuba travels to brigades across the front, listening to commanders, identifying pain points, finding ways to deploy ground robots.

"The people we work with love us. Some officers hate us because we push them to do more work," she says. ⤵️

5/ At each base, defenders show off their homemade battlefield innovations—robots hacked together in garages and workshops.

Some brigades are better resourced than others. But even units with minimal support are building solutions daily just to stay alive and free. ⤵️

6/ Consider: 99% of ground drones in Ukraine's military are UKRAINIAN-MADE.

"Ukrainian engineers are creating the future of warfare, not just for Ukraine, but for the world," says Lyuba, who pushes the brass to adopt what works. ⤵️

7/ The game-changer: In Kharkiv, Ukraine's 3rd Assault Brigade successfully attacked Russian positions using ONLY ground robots and FPV drones.

The remaining Russians were directed by drones overhead straight into Ukrainian hands.

Zero Ukrainian infantry.

🖼️Da Vinci⤵️

8/ And so it's no wonder that Zelenskyy today announced a "draft agreement [with the USA] on drones has already been prepared by the Ukrainian side."

"Thank you to every American heart that supports us to protect lives," Zelensky added. "Thank you, President Trump!" ⤵️

9/ Behind many of these breakthroughs—Lyuba's nonprofit @Dignitas_Fund:

"We build and test solutions, prove their value, then advocate for government adoption."

They're the bridge between garage innovators and the General Staff, which, Kirichenko reports, listens to her. ⤵️

10/ The impact: 22 combat units now deploy ground robots. Soldiers evacuated daily. Lives saved. Russians stopped.

As an operator said: "Before robots, we lost 4 vehicles in May alone. Now? Zero driver fatalities."

This is what "stopping the killing" looks like in practice. ⤵️

11/ When asked what she'll do after the war, cheerful Lyuba Shipovich's response hits hard:

"First, I need to survive until it ends."

And maybe Ukrainian tech is about to help America thrive, too.

Read @DVKirichenko's story: 🧵🎬lbc.co.uk/news/exclusive…

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