FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
The secret of a good sniper is to have the patience to wait...
" Killing an enemy soldier is like a normal job. I make sure he's in range and no one can spot me and I have the option to get away. The cleanest job is to finish it off with a precise shot. Then I have no second thoughts: if I don't kill the Russians, they will kill me ." Sasha calls himself "Ghosts", while his unit is called "Ghosts of Bakhmut".
We met him on the outskirts of Pokrovsk at 11 o'clock, on a cold, wet morning, with an overcast sky, a strong wind driving the thermometer well below zero; in the background the intermittent sound of shelling. Sasha was born 40 years ago in Kiev. The first wife left for Moscow in 2013 with their daughter Vladislava, who is now 13 years old. He has remarried and his new wife lives in Kiev together with his second daughter, Anastasia, 8 years old.
But this is to guarantee Vladislava that he now does not want to be known. He explains: " The Russians can search for him and damage him to punish me. Their secret services are very careful ." The reason? He is one of the best Ukrainian snipers: since 17 months he has personally killed 147 Russian soldiers and in general with his unit in the same period he exceeded 1200 "eliminated targets". They are all professional soldiers, have participated in the most important battles since February 2022: Bucha, Irpin, the Mariupol area, Sumy and the Northern Front, and then gradually to Kharkiv, the battles in Bakhmut and Avdiivka.
Sasha, left his job as an engineer to go to the battles in the Donetsk area. He was almost killed in the siege of Debaltsevo. They are well-known veterans and therefore receive one of the highest salaries in the Ukrainian army: over 4,500 euros per month, sometimes rich with "bonuses" for their successes.
It seems easy to narrate their actions by gilding them with the epic tones of sniper duels. Between war literature and cinematography, since the First World War, the figure of the sharpshooter, a lone anarchist in the colorless sea of armies, has always inspired authors, photographers, journalists and directors. But he deliberately tries to describe dryly and matter-of-factly.
" The secret of a good sniper is to have the patience to wait. Shooting too much is pointless, in fact, it can be very dangerous. We usually go on patrols with 8 people: 2 snipers, 2 communications and drone operators, one responsible for rapid evacuation, 3 with machine guns for cover. On our shoulders we carry backpacks weighing over 30 kilograms, in winter even more because of the warm equipment. Missions last more than 48 hours: we leave the jeeps 5-6 kilometers from the operational zone and march silently, separately, often overrunning the Russian front lines.
We are stationary and camouflaged for dozens of hours at a time, the thermal sights on the rifle allow us perfect visibility even at night , "he says.
In November 2023, a Ukrainian sniper managed to hit a Russian pedestrian from a record distance of 3.8 kilometers. Sasha's personal best is about one and a half kilometers, but most of his throws are between 300 and 500 meters.
In Pokrosk, things are not going well at all. He says: "The Russians attack all the time. They seem to have an infinite number of drones, almost all superior to ours. I don't know how it will end." /Adapted "Pamphlet" from "Corriere Della Sera"
Lini një Përgjigje