Ukrainian Sniper Claims World Record<\/strong><\/a>
\nWhether a fatal shot of a Russian soldier is provable or not, Ukrainian troops take pride in the news<\/p>\nBy Bob Cronin, Newser Staff | Dec 4, 2023<\/p>\n
It won’t show up on a Guinness list, but a Ukrainian sniper is claiming he set a record by killing a Russian soldier more than two miles away. That would surpass the generally accepted mark by more than 850 feet. Vyacheslav Kovalskiy’s 12,470-foot shot was captured on video and reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, which reports the footage shows the soldier doubling over and falling. The bullet traveled for 9 seconds before hitting him, the video documents. “There is no chance he survived,” Kovalskiy said. Still, without up-close verification, the claim has been met with some skepticism.<\/p>\n
The soldier could have moved in those 9 seconds, and weather conditions can affect the trajectory. Experts said such a shot is possible but extremely difficult because of all the variables. “Anything over about 1,300 meters (about 4,265 feet) can be more luck than skill,” said Steve Walsh, a former US Marines sniper instructor. Much math is required in a long-distance shot, and even the curvature of the Earth has to be taken into account, as well as temperature, humidity, and wind. A laser was used to measure the distance. Snipers intentionally shoot high in anticipation of gravity’s effect.<\/p>\n
Kovalskiy, 58, argues that stationary targets have been hit at such lengths in competitions, including in the US; he’s won long-distance shooting contests in Europe and North America. Whether anyone outside his country accepts the record or not, the claim has emerged as a source of pride among Ukrainians. Plenty of countries at war have embraced fighting legends, and the Journal points out that snipers especially have been celebrated in the former states of the Soviet Union. An artilleryman said that when Kovalskiy’s news reached him in the Kreminna Forest in east Ukraine, it was a “punch the air” moment. He added, “Everyone was talking about it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Two miles away?\u00a0 You just don’t lead ’em so much. Well, actually you do… you lead ’em a LOT.<\/p>\n
I don’t buy the nine seconds of flight time.\u00a0 Impossible.\u00a0 Why you ask?\u00a0 (rhetorical)<\/p>\n
Well, let me put on my ‘TAH MYTHBUSTERS’ ball cap and tell you why.<\/p>\n
They say that if you dropped a bullet at the side of a rifle barrel at the exact<\/em> same time that you fire the weapon, both bullets will hit the ground at the very same time. The laws of gravity cannot be denied.<\/p>\nSo, maybe he fired from an elevated position to somewhere down in the valley… as like Grand Canyon-ish, so there’s that.<\/p>\n
I’ll leave this up to the TAH ballistics experts but hopefully I’ve disproved the nine second theory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nine seconds of flight time? Seems like a huge challenge unless the target it stationary. Ukrainian … Ukrainian Sniper Claims World Record<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":663,"featured_media":150467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[640],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/663"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=150466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150469,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150466\/revisions\/150469"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/150467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=150466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=150466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=150466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/sniper-435x333.jpg\")
Nine seconds of flight time? Seems like a huge challenge unless the target it stationary.<\/p>\n