Russo-Ukrainian War Thread - Page 569

HRODIVKA, Ukraine—The war in Ukraine is a meat grinder of artillery, missiles and deadly minefields. Running silently aside all that is a test of battlefield marksmanship for snipers pursuing the fight one shot at a time.

Around 15 miles from the front line, near Bakhmut, three Ukrainian snipers recently emerged unseen from undergrowth. Their team, which calls itself “Devils and Angels,” is on orders to kill Russian senior commanders, critical members of artillery teams and other high-profile targets.

The war in Ukraine is rich territory for snipers, reminiscent of World War I, with its long and largely static firing line across a flat landscape. The snipers training near Bakhmut are top shots, but they were honing a skill even more important for snipers: stealth.

“We work quietly, we are invisible,” said a team member whose call sign is Fisher.

As Kyiv looks to tip the balance in its continuing counteroffensive, the role of the sniper is evolving. Russian mines make a sniper’s trips into no man’s land more treacherous, while drones make it harder for them to hide. Training snipers also takes weeks that Ukraine doesn’t have to spare.

In response, Ukraine—like militaries in the West—is adding more sharpshooters with less technical training than elite snipers to back up ordinary infantry troops with precise targeting.

“Sniper shooting can’t win the war on its own, but one good shot can change a situation at a particular moment on a particular line,” said Ruslan Shpakovych, a former Ukrainian special forces sniper now training soldiers for the role.

Stealth is vital in part because snipers do more than just killing targets from a distance. They conduct reconnaissance and, when shooting, their goal is to shock and demoralize enemy troops, sowing disorganization—an enemy of any military.

“If you’re assembling to attack and your lieutenant is picked off, the unit goes into disarray,” said retired Army Major General Robert Scales, a military historian who served as commandant of the U.S. Army War College.

Russia’s army is dependent on officers for leadership because it doesn’t have a corps of noncommissioned officers, or soldiers who rose through the ranks to leadership positions, as in Western militaries and, increasingly, in Ukraine. Russian officers can often be identified from afar by their uniforms and even their boots.

“When you kill a Russian small-unit leader, you completely discombobulate the unit,” said Scales.

The Soviet Union often elevated its snipers to hero status. Ukrainian-born Lyudmila Pavlichenko was nicknamed “Lady Death” by Soviet authorities for her high kill rate in World War II. Another sniper, Vasily Zaitsev, won some of the Soviet Union’s highest honors during the Battle of Stalingrad.

Even now, Russian media and official channels laud individual snipers in Ukraine.

Urban warfare, such as Stalingrad and Bakhmut, is perfect for snipers.

“But snipers also become much more important when the front lines stabilize, as they have for the last many months in Ukraine,” said Mark Cancian, an adviser with the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Stable front lines allow snipers to develop good ‘hides’ and fields of fire,” he said.

Modern sniping developed among German and British troops along the static trench lines of World War I. Similar trenches now line the Ukraine front, and just like a century ago, soldiers rising above their security can get killed by snipers.

Ukraine’s terrain of fields and gently rolling hills, offering clear vistas, is “a sniper’s paradise,” said Scales.

Snipers generally work in teams of two, with one typically serving as a spotter, calculating distance, wind speed and other variables that can affect a shot. When one sleeps, the other watches.

Trips into no man’s land can last for as long as nine days, though more typically are around a day and a half, during which snipers are cut off from their unit, said members of the Devils and Angels. Infantry units support them from afar, providing cover fire if needed. Snipers feed crucial front-line intelligence back to commanders.

No enemy sneak attack should get past a trained sniper squad or shooter out front, “because they can spot it coming and they can shoot at it and correct artillery toward it,” said Shpakovych, who trains snipers for “Come Back Alive,” a Ukrainian charity that raises money to train and equip local forces.

A sniper with the call sign Cuckoo, who once spent three days lying in wait, said that in the field she only thinks of the moment, not life back home.

“I am thinking, ‘There is not enough water, there is too much dust, when I am going to have my next shower,’ ” said Cuckoo, whose handle was first used by Finnish snipers fighting Soviet troops in 1939, for the bird’s ability to disguise itself. “You are disconnected from your personal life.”

A reporter before Russia’s large-scale invasion last year, the 32-year-old is currently fighting with the 47th Brigade in Zaporizhzhia. That part of the front line has seen some of the fiercest battles of a counteroffensive that has become bogged down by Russian mines, fortifications and helicopter attacks.

A combination of those obstacles—which impede snipers’ advances—and the time needed to train crack snipers has prompted Kyiv to deploy a type increasingly used by the U.S.: top shots who move alongside ordinary infantry, often carrying higher-powered rifles, to pick off more distant targets.

Cuckoo said she would be doing that to support an infantry squad.

“Helicopters are firing, artillery is hitting your lines, Russians that were hiding just minutes before are suddenly moving,” she said. “You hit what you can see.”

Sharpshooters have proved particularly helpful in fighting over the contested city of Bakhmut. In close combat there, they helped repel relentless waves of advancing troops from Russia’s Wagner militia, said Andriy Chernyak, an official in the HUR, Ukrainian military intelligence. At such short range, artillery risks hitting Ukrainian soldiers, he said.

Shpakovych says that snipers are being used to varying success in Ukraine, depending on the unit. Ukraine only began properly training their snipers in 2013 and it takes several years and a lot of sophisticated equipment to make a good one, he said.

Russia has more and better equipped snipers, Shpakovych said. He and the Devils and Angels shooters hold Russian snipers’ skills in high regard.

In November, Ukrainian armed forces said that one of their Special Forces snipers shot and killed “an occupier” at a distance of 8,900 feet, which they said is the second longest shot recorded. The Canadian military in 2017 said a member of its Special Forces in Iraq shot and killed somebody at 11,600 feet, or more than 2 miles.

Sharpshooters training for the Devils and Angels, attached to the 115th Brigade, were selected after surviving several tough battles. Snipers say that their skill set is considered among the hardest infantry roles to perfect. Training courses typically have a high failure rate, according to former snipers.

Ukraine’s initial sniper training course lasts a month and a half. The comparable U.S. Army initiation at Sniper School in Fort Benning, Ga., takes seven weeks.

Fisher was told he was picked out because he had been a hunter in his native Crimea, shooting rabbits, pheasants and deer. The two other snipers say they don’t know why they were chosen. One of the squad was a professional magician, who still loves to practice disappearing tricks with cards and cigarettes on the rest of the team.

“You can train to shoot well, but psychologically you have to be calm,” which you cannot learn, said a private whose call name is Beard.

Patience and stealth are vital. At the Ukrainian training ground, snipers disappeared into scrubland and were told to hide within a radius of 15 meters. The instructor wandered around trying—and failing—to find them, while a drone hovered above, seeking the men.

Eventually the drone spotted Beard, who emerged, angry at being discovered, with every part of his body and weapon draped in camouflage.

Sniping also requires a particular psychological profile. While most soldiers go into battle knowing that they may be forced to shoot and kill, they don’t always set out to take lives. Rather than killing, they might force a retreat or surrender, or just wound enemy soldiers. Many soldiers can go days or weeks without encountering opponents—and may never see an enemy’s face.

Snipers, in contrast, always head out seeking to kill enemy soldiers whom they can clearly see, and generally have little doubt if they have taken a life.

The three snipers in training said they have killed before, though declined to say how many times. Cuckoo also declined to say how many she had killed but said she wants to kill more.

None of the snipers feel much empathy for their targets after pulling the trigger. Many have lost close comrades. Of the original 26-member Devils and Angels team, only 14 are left. One sniper and one infantry support member were killed, and the rest were injured.

“I don’t see their faces, the emotions on them, the photos of their wives, or anything else about their lives,” said Cuckoo.

“I just see figures that move, and I shoot,” she said.