Sniper Alexander Kislinsky was celebrated in Russia for his service in Ukraine and his hatred of the “Nazis”. Just days after photos and videos showed him in action, Alexander Kislinsky fell.

In mid-May, Alexander Kislinsky made his big appearance in the pro-Russian media. Photos and videos of the 22nd Spetsnaz Brigade sniper circulated on pro-Russian accounts. There his group could be seen moving through a grove and setting up a position in a damaged building. He also added the patriotic sentence: “…my grandfathers didn’t finish off these fascist scum, so let’s finish them off now…”.

No military celebrities

A dream for Putin propaganda. Kislinsky spoke of the Ukrainian opponents only as “Nazis”. Tanks and armored vehicles with the Z symbol can also be seen in the photos. Less than 14 days after the photos were published, Kislinsky fell. Whether it was actually Russia’s best sniper, as some accounts claim, is rather questionable. Until an appearance in the Donbass, Kislinsky was not a military celebrity. What can you say that he was a real trained sniper. And not just a soldier who got himself a long-range rifle.

Rifle from Austria

Kislinsky is armed with a Steyr SSG 08 in photos. This is a state-of-the-art sniper weapon that has already been seen in Syria by Russian forces. The bolt-action rifle is not a single-shot rifle, but is equipped with a magazine. The Steyr HS .50, on the other hand, is single-shot. It is quite possible that Kislinsky was already deployed in Syria. The Russians probably use the variant of the SSG 08 for the caliber. 338 Lapua Magnum. The cartridge is 14.93mm in diameter and 93.5mm in length. It penetrates light armor and body armor up to about 1000 meters. The effective range is about 1700 meters. The Speznaz screwed a damper onto the already unwieldy rifle, which concealed the sound and light flash.

Few reliable eulogies

The grief comments claim that he died covering his group. In fact, nothing reliable is known about the circumstances of his death. Survivors always receive a few heroic sentences. The formulation that his group was an “effective combat unit” that “inflicted considerable damage on the enemy” should be correct. The war in Ukraine is asymmetrical in every respect – including the soldiers involved. Kyiv and Moscow have highly trained commandos – like this Spetsnaz Brigade – in action. These “super soldiers” form groups and go hunting. In fact, they hunt poorly trained conscripts.

At the front, the commandos encountered the practically untrained and insufficiently armed units of the Ukrainian territorial defense or the forcibly recruited “volunteer” battalions of the self-proclaimed separatist republics. The Kiev commandos are chasing the truck drivers of supply convoys. In the Donbass, the Russian army is primarily putting pressure on the territorial defense troops, who have to fill in the gaps between the permanent positions of the regular troops.

hunting the hunters

But all these fighter squads and snipers meet a new enemy in Ukraine. Drones, in turn, hunt the hunters. The classic methods of camouflage are of little use. Even civil agricultural drones are equipped with modules that can scan the ground with millimeter precision or react to body heat. There are countless videos where the elite fighters are exposed and then shot at.