- A Ukrainian soldier with the call sign “Grandpa” said he shot down the drone with his rifle.
- The electrician-turned-soldier took aim at a Shahed drone that exploded with a Kalashnikov.
- Iran is supplying Russia with a large number of shahid drones.
A 59-year-old Ukrainian soldier known by his call sign “Grandpa” has reportedly been awarded the Medal of Valor for shooting down an exploding Russian drone with a Kalashnikov automatic rifle. Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces.
Identified only by call sign, this soldier has been fighting in Zaporizhia for over a year.he told the news site Zaporizhia public This is how he came out of his trench one night and heard an Iranian drone. He picked up his rifle and started shooting.
“Grandpa” spoke of his incredible shooting feats.
“I caught him. He was coming straight towards me. He was probably 150 meters away from me. He said he didn’t have time to switch to automatic, firing single shots at exploding drones that could fly hundreds of miles per hour, depending on the series.
“Singles didn’t have time to switch. He flies fast. He flies 40 meters in about a second,” he said.
“After hiding behind the horizon, sparks fell from there, the engine began to stall, and there was complete silence. Six seconds later, an explosion rang out,” he told Zaporizhia Public.
In a Facebook post, the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Force said that its “grandfather” had been awarded the Bravery Cross by Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valery Zardini for his bravery.
Before Putin’s invasion, the “grandfather” was employed as an electrician. He said he joined forces to fight Putin’s soldiers on February 25, the day after the Russian invasion began.
He said the first village he helped liberate was the place where he was born, northeast of Muikolaiv.
“The first village we recaptured from the ‘orcs’ was Poltavka, where I was born. And there I met my childhood friends. They all came out crying,” he told Zaporizhia Public.
After the war ended and the liberation of all of Ukraine he fought for, the “grandfather” told the media that he was looking forward to a family vacation in Russian-occupied Crimea in 2104.
The Shahed drone, shot down by a 59-year-old man, is part of Russia’s attempt to use these “low-precision systems” to “compensate for a decline in Russia’s supply of precision weapons,” the War Research Institute said. Explaining.
The Shahed drone is said to have a warhead packed with explosives in the nose. BBCdesigned to explode on impact.
Russia delivered its first Shahid drone and the larger Mojahel-6 from Iran in August 2022. The Washington Post reported. The first shipments included Shahed-129 and Shahed-191 models, the newspaper said.
Russia has used these drones to repeatedly attack Ukraine, including attacking the cities of Kiev, Odessa, Poltava, Vinnytsia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkov and Chernihiv.