Ukrainian sniper claims world record for longest successful shot

Ukraine and Russia have been fighting for nearly three horrendous years. Countless lives have been lost and thousands of war stories shared. Despite all the horrors of war though, an incredible story emerged about a Ukrainian sniper who claims he broke the world record for longest battlefield kill shot.

In November 2023, a sniper operating under the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) named Vyacheslav Kovalskiy claimed he set a new record for the world's longest kill shot when he fired a bullet that took out a Russian soldier almost two and a half miles (or roughly four kilometers) from his position.

Kovalskiy's shot took nine seconds to reach its target, and a video recording of the incident that the Wall Street Journal reviewed confirmed that the Ukrainian sniper did indeed set a gruesome new record.

Kovalskiy's bullet traveled about 12,470 feet or about 3,800 meters before it hit its intended target, and while the achievement showed off the skills of Ukraine's formidable snipers, the country's silent assassins have been making the frontlines a chaotic mess for Russian soldiers ever since the very beginning of the war.

On the frontlines of the brutal fight to push Russian forces out of the occupied, there was a strategy that emerged to sow chaos and fear among the Kremlin’s invading armies. 

In August 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported on Ukraine’s secretive snipers and their mission aimed at targeting high-value Russian commanders and demoralizing Vladimir Putin’s soldiers. 

There was one sniper team in particular that had been picking off senior commanders and they dubbed themselves “Devils and Angels,” but they weren’t just killing military leaders. 

The group had also been tasked with terminating the vital members of artillery teams as well as eliminating any other high-profile marks they’re sent out to find on the battlefield. 

“We work quietly, we are invisible,” one of the sniper team’s three members explained to the Wall Street Journal. But just how effective were these sniper teams on a modern battlefield in Ukraine? 

Retired Army Major General and Military Historian Robert Scales told The Journal that snipers could still have an outsized effect in today’s combat due to the nature of their role at the time.

“If you’re assembling to attack and your lieutenant is picked off,” Scales explained, “the unit goes into disarray,” which makes snipers an extremely effective battlefield tool. 

“When you kill a Russian small-unit leader, you completely discombobulate the unit,” the retired major general added—and it’s something Ukrainian snipers had gotten good at. 

The most high-profile example of a commander killed by a sniper’s bullet occurred in March 2022 when Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky was eliminated by sniper fire. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By an Unkown Author

Sukhovetsky was the commanding general of Russia’s 7th Airborne Division as well as the deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army according to Business Insider. 

However, Sukhovetsky's death was only one of the several impressive feats Ukrainian snipers have been credited with achieving. In August 2023, a sniper team allegedly took twenty Russian soldiers prisoners. 

The Press Service of Ukraine's Special Operation Forces revealed the story that snipers from the 3rd Special Purpose Regiment took all 20 soldiers without firing a single shot. 

The Wall Street Journal noted that snipers had proved to be particularly effective in the battle for the city of Bakhmut, where they helped to repel waves of attacking Wagner soldiers before its ultimate capture. 

In July 2023, a BBC News team interviewed members of a team of elite snipers known as “the ghosts of Bakhmut” and discovered that the group had killed a confirmed 524 soldiers. 

"It's nothing to be proud of,” one member of the sniper team with the callsign Kuzia said. “We're not killing people, we're destroying the enemy,” he added.

Snipers can become extremely important assets when frontlines stabilize according to Mark Cancian, an advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.  

Photo Credit: Twitter @csis_isp

“Stable front lines allow snipers to develop good ‘hides’ and fields of fire,” Cancian told The Wall Street Journal, which was exactly what has happened in Ukraine since the country's summer counter offensive of 2023.