Ukrainian sniper claims to have killed two Russian soldiers with ‘longest ever shot’ of 2.5 miles
A Ukrainian sniper is reported to have killed two Russian soldiers with a single bullet from 2.5 miles away in what is believed to be the longest ever kill shot.
The record shot was fired on 14 August with the assistance of artificial intelligence using a 14.5mm Alligator rifle, a Ukrainian military blogger said on Telegram.
Footage of the shot shows the sniper operating near the Pokrovsk-Myrnograd frontline, firing a bullet through a window 4,000 metres away behind which were two Russian troops, blogger Yuri Butusov said.
“Impressive efficiency,” Mr Butusov wrote. “During the year of performing combat missions in the defence of this direction, almost 1,000 servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces have already been destroyed!”
The military blogger claims that the previous record belonged to a Ukrainian soldier and was claimed during the ongoing full-scale war with Russia.
“In November 2023, a Ukrainian sniper from the SBU unit, 58-year-old Vyacheslav Kovalskyi, eliminated an invader at a distance of 3,800 meters in the Kherson region. The shot was made from a Ukrainian-made Horizon’s Lord multi-caliber sniper rifle,” he wrote.
The previous records are held by a Canadian soldier during the War in Iraq against Islamic State (May 2017, 3,540 m), an Australian soldier in Afghanistan (November 2012, 2,815 m) and a Ukrainian soldier in November 2022 (2,710 m).
The most recent attack came as Russian forces continue to focus a large chunk of their resources and manpower on the Pokrovsk frontline, where over the past year they have aimed to cut off key strategic supply lines for Ukraine.
Pokrovsk is a vital transport hub for the Ukrainian military, which serves as a feeder town for many of its frontline positions in the east.
Russian forces are pushing hard to encircle the town and have captured a string of villages to the south and east in the past months.
Moscow says it has annexed Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region and controls over 70% of the area’s territory. Kyiv and most Western countries reject Russia’s seizure of the territory as an illegal land grab.
Capturing Pokrovsk, dubbed “the gateway to Donetsk” by Russian media, and Kostiantynivka to its northeast which Russian forces are also trying to envelop, would give Moscow a platform to drive north towards the two biggest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in Donetsk – Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
