When Magician, a Ukrainian serviceman, was remotely steering a robot hauling a wounded soldier away from the front line towards safety, the worst-case scenario played out on his monitor.
The 27-year-old, who asked AFP to identify him by his call sign in line with military protocol, was navigating the bot on a journey with life-or-death stakes when grey smoke appeared on his control screen.
His machine had hit a mine.
The proliferation of cheap but deadly drones deployed by Russian and Ukrainian forces has irreversibly changed how the war is being waged -- including how frontline medics retrieve the wounded from the battlefield. "For five minutes, that person's death was on my conscience," Magician told AFP.
