A video released by Ukraine’s 92nd Assault Brigade purports to show a wounded soldier being evacuated by a heavy-lift hexacopter after mines and Russian drone activity prevented a conventional ground recovery. The brigade’s claim, reported by The War Zone, could mark an operational use of a small uncrewed aircraft for casualty extraction, but the footage has not been independently verified and could depict a staged demonstration rather than a combat mission.
The video appears to show the soldier attaching a harness beneath the aircraft and hanging below its rigid landing legs during flight. The War Zone reports that Ukrainian units described the aircraft as a Gurzuf Defense heavy hexacopter, supplied without charge, and said a UAV operator from the 30th Mechanized Brigade piloted it. The soldier was said to have remained in contact with that operator throughout the claimed recovery. Neither account establishes autonomous flight or navigation; the available description instead identifies a human UAV operator.
According to The War Zone, the 92nd, 30th and 14th Mechanized Brigades, the 10th Army Corps and Gurzuf Defense were involved. The units have not disclosed the claimed mission’s location, date, extraction distance, flight time or the casualty’s condition beyond saying the soldier is receiving treatment and rehabilitation.
The depicted improvised configuration indicates a potential constraint: the casualty would need to be capable of fastening the harness, either alone or with assistance, and would ride exposed beneath the airframe rather than in a protected litter. The report says the platform may have been an Audag-6, but that identification and its stated 200-pound payload and 15-mile range are not confirmed for this claimed mission.
Ukraine is separately testing SkyFall’s purpose-built StarGate evacuation hexacopter. United24 Media’s account of an Associated Press-observed demonstration says StarGate carries a medical-grade stretcher, uses Starlink and L-Link communications, and has AI-assisted navigation intended for GPS-denied or jammed conditions. That system was handed to a combat brigade for frontline testing; it does not establish that the 92nd’s claimed improvised evacuation used those capabilities.
For now, the released video is evidence of a claimed or depicted aerial casualty-recovery method, not verified proof of a repeatable frontline medical-evacuation capability.