The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is driving both nations toward deploying drones capable of selecting and striking targets without any human intervention, raising urgent ethical and legal concerns. Russia has reportedly fielded the V2U drone — a system equipped with onboard AI and computer vision that can autonomously identify, track and engage targets after launch — while Ukraine has developed modular AI guidance packages and claims limited use of fully autonomous drones in strikes over Russian-occupied Crimea. Experts warn that battlefield pressures are outpacing safeguards for human oversight, with the prospect of AI-coordinated drone swarms numbering in the thousands posing a severe challenge to established principles of proportional force and civilian protection under international law.