THE SOUTHERN FRONT LINE, Ukraine – The Russian position was marked with the blue flag of Moscow’s elite airborne units, but the fabric looked almost transparent through the Ukrainian sniper’s scope.
The flag, which hung atop a Russian-occupied building in southern Ukraine, was just over a mile away. When a Russian soldier appeared, it took about four seconds for the sniper’s heavy bullet to reach the man’s chest.
“They move morning and evening,” said Bart, the leader of the four-man sniper team.
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They had arrived in the dark, after driving on pitch-black roads, crammed into a pickup truck with its lights off. With hurried steps over broken glass, they positioned their rifles at their position, known as their “hiding spot.”
Bart relaxed and stretched his arms behind his 20-pound rifle, which was hidden among the rubble of a half-destroyed building. It was getting dark and it was going to be a long day.
If Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was defined as a grueling artillery war supported by tanks, drones and cruise missiles, then the role of the sniper, invisible and deadly, occupies an often overlooked part of the battlefield.
Overshadowed by high-tech killing devices and the blunt force of howitzers and mortars, Ukraine’s snipers are part of a more rudimentary fighting force: the infantry. There are comparatively few, but they are no less important than they were more than a century ago, when a rifleman in World War I could terrorize 100 men with a single shot.
But modern technology, particularly the proliferation of small drones that serve as deadly observation tools over the front lines, has made sniping from hidden positions far more difficult. That has forced Ukrainian snipers to change tactics or risk a quick death.
A New York Times team spent a week with a Ukrainian sniper team in the south of the country. We read reports of sniper missions and interviewed snipers, instructors and trainees across Ukraine to understand this behind-the-scenes war waged by a cadre of well-trained riflemen.
Basic skills
About 400 miles from Bart’s team, Volodymyr, 54, an infantryman with the 19th Separate Rifle Battalion, was preparing for his first day of sniper training at a shooting range.
In front of him were paper targets littered with a series of direct hits. There are few official Ukrainian sniper schools, and much of the instruction occurs in ad hoc classrooms, private training courses, and volunteers scattered across the country.
Some snipers have complained that the focus on attacking trenches, a necessary tactic to retake territory, has made sniper training less of a priority for some commanders.
“It is a personal desire of me and my comrades to become snipers,” Volodymyr said. “I have to develop basic skills because there won’t be time for that at the front.”
Snipers interviewed for this article asked to be identified only by their call sign or first name to protect their identities.
The number of snipers in the Ukrainian military is not publicly known, but trainers estimate there are a few thousand, divided into two main categories.
Most are known as snipers, capable of shooting people from around 300 meters away. They are often in the trenches supporting their comrades.
The second category is the scout snipers, known among snipers as “long-range shooters.” These are the few infantrymen who can shoot accurately from 1 mile and beyond and are able to read wind, temperature and barometric pressure (with the help of a spotter) before lightly pulling the trigger.
One September day, Volodymyr’s instructor taught him exactly that: how to pull the trigger.
“The trigger should be pulled directly into the barrel channel,” the instructor said. “If you pull it to the side, you miss the target. If you pull it down, you provoke a jerk, which also affects the accuracy of the shot.”
Volodymyr listened intently and stood behind the .338 caliber rifle placed in front of him.
“Many people are afraid to become snipers because there is a perception that snipers are one of the enemy’s priority targets,” he said.
Priority goals
“At approximately midnight, our sniper at position 2 observed an enemy machine gun nest,” the report said. It was written after a sniper operation that took place near the eastern city of Bakhmut this year.
“Our sniper engaged the enemy machine gun position,” the report continued, “leaving two confirmed enemy” killed in combat “and one possible enemy” killed.
In military circles, snipers are known as “force multipliers,” meaning they can have an outsized impact on the battlefield.
But pulling the trigger comes at a cost, especially in the age of drones and thermal imaging sights, which ensure that snipers, no matter how well camouflaged, are likely to be exposed by their body heat (without hard-to-obtain anti-heat gear). . The dust, smoke and sometimes flash that is fired from a heavy bullet as it exits the barrel at speeds in excess of 2,700 feet per second are also clearly visible.
This means that not every Russian soldier who appears in the crosshairs is a good candidate for a kill. The potential reward must outweigh the risk. So the probability of firing a shot increases if the soldier is a “priority target,” such as a machine gunner, an officer, or an anti-tank missile crew member.
Or more importantly: Russian snipers.
“They have some good, efficient people,” said Marik, a Ukrainian sniper with an infantry battalion called the Da Vinci Wolves. “A few, but there are some. I think you should never underestimate an enemy.”
His team managed to kill a group of them early in the war, he said – not with their rifles, but with artillery to ensure no one could escape. The Russians try to do the same thing when they spot Ukrainian snipers.
“We probably saw them purely by chance,” he said.
A well-trained sniper team makes its presence known on the front lines through harassment and killing until it retreats – or is discovered and either suppressed or eliminated. It’s often a delicate dance for snipers as they choose their position and either shoot or observe.
Killing another human being with a high-powered rifle and scope is a calculated and occasionally intimate experience, in contrast to the frantic carnage of close-up trench warfare. Especially at long ranges, snipers often have to wait for hours and adjust their target using weather apps, ballistic calculators and notebooks before pulling the trigger.
Designed specifically for deadly long-range shooting, the bullets and their cases are often assembled by the snipers themselves – called “handloading” – to ensure they are perfectly weighted for the task. High-quality sniper ammunition is difficult to obtain given the many calibers used by the Ukrainian armed forces, so volunteers often purchase them privately, as well as sniper rifles, to help supply troops.
And unlike Western troops, who are grappling with the moral complexities of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where insurgents mingle with local populations, Ukrainian snipers defending their country from invasion see a clear need to pull the trigger.
“I think about the people on the other side. They may not want to be here, but they are here,” said Raptor, another sniper on Bart’s team. “It’s unnatural to kill someone, but that’s our job.”
In fact, kills are currency for snipers, who often compete for resources with drone units and others on the battlefield. That’s one of the reasons why Bart’s sniper team uses a powerful camera to record their shots.
“We have a saying: No video, no killing,” said the team’s commander.
But snipers can do much more than just shoot people from long distances. In reality, killing an enemy is often the last step in a long list of other priorities, such as: B. Reconnaissance, protection of attacking units and location of targets for artillery.
Wind change
The wind changed around 2 p.m. It no longer came from the left, but blew directly in front of the crew’s position, encouraging a rapid adjustment of their rifles.
Around this time, a dreaded “FPV” drone – a cheap racing drone loaded with explosives – appeared in the sky and three mortar shells landed nearby. But no Russian soldiers appeared, just incoming and outgoing artillery shells that shook the doors into their frames and forced the snipers inside the building. The gusts howled through the rubble and blew through the camouflage netting that helped conceal their positions.
Toward evening, as the ground cooled and the setting sun shone through the windows of the Russian building, the team spotted something in the back of a distant room. Was it a machine gun emplacement or something else?
Since there was no clear answer, there was little reason to shoot. They would note this in the report when they returned and a unit would send an exploding drone.
Slowly, between early evening and darkness, the team members packed their bags and zipped up their rifles. They rushed to the truck and drove away. The skeletons of the destroyed houses along the street were now illuminated by the light of the rising moon.
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