‘Like the movies’: How Ukraine’s ground robots are changing rules of war

Ternopil, Ukraine – A ground robot carrying ammunition and resembling a real-life cousin of Wall-E, the 2008 Pixar cartoon’s rusty protagonist, got stuck late one night in a trench in northeastern Ukraine.

Named Murakha (ant in Ukrainian), the robot was a bit more than a metre high, but had a large clearance to trudge across rugged terrain, bombed-out streets, mud, sleet or snow...