Snipers: second place in inflicting casualties
The last time that you spoke to Euromaidan Press, you said that helping snipers is the most cost-effective thing you can do for Ukrainian army, apart from artillery. Is that still true?
Judging from the casualties rates from our side and the Russian side, and according to the information from the medics, when it is relatively calm on the front lines:
- 88% of casualties are from artillery.
- 10% are from snipers.
- 2% are from ordinary gunfire.
When the offensive starts either from the Ukrainian side or Russian sides, then the proportions are different, but in general, snipers are always in second place.
Very seldom does an attack continue when the snipers start shooting. Usually, the Russians retreat.
Another reason why snipers are important is that if the Russian attack is going on, and the Russians are trying to encircle Ukrainians, then snipers come to the scene. One of the effective ways to stop their attack, when there is not enough artillery or machine guns, is to use snipers in a direct attack. Very seldom does an attack continue when the snipers start shooting. Usually, the Russians retreat.
Additionally, during Ukrainian regular offensives, like it was near Kharkiv [in the fall of 2022], it is important to suppress the machine guns of the enemy, to hit their armored vehicles from Barrett .50 BMGs and capture them.
How is that possible? To capture armored vehicles from a sniper rifle? Tell us about that.
Well, sniper rifles of caliber .50 BMG penetrate the armor of the IFV. There are three types of American armor-piercing bullets. The explosion inside the IFV is like ball lightning; the vehicle stops, and you can shoot a few more times. But the main thing is that after capturing this vehicle, it can be easily repaired and used for attacks.
You mentioned special American bullets right now. I imagine that the right equipment is essential in your work. Could you tell us more about what sort of tools the snipers need?
First of all, we use American armor-piercing bullets, taking them from Browning machine guns. Not every bullet from those machine guns is suitable for our sniper rifles. So, our task is to find compatible ones and supply everyone.
Usually, we use an ordinary
.50 BMG caliber sniper bullet to take out soldiers, we buy those every day and have purchased nearly 150,000 of those bullets.
.416 Remington Magnum, .375 CheyTac, .338 Lapua Magnum are the most widespread calibers that we use, sometimes we buy thousands of those daily, especially now.
Overall, snipers shoot more in this war than in previous wars, and even more so during the counter-offensive. So, we need a lot of bullets, the demand is huge and we are forced to buy those every day, because otherwise the counter-offensive will stop.
Russians mined everything. This is even worse than during the Kursk battle, in World War II. They mined literally everything they could. They even mined their trenches. Even if you get to the enemy trench and jump into it, it doesn’t mean that you will survive. A Russian officer somewhere there can remotely activate all those mines along with Ukrainian soldiers and the remnants of Russian soldiers.
There are huge difficulties with the Russian mining, and it gets worse, becase Russians constantly disperse many bombs with the help of special devices on top of what is mined already. So, neither the military nor the infantry can move around freely...
