The Washington Post - USA (2022-03-07)

A10 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, MARCH 7 , 2022

war in ukraine

mer Marine snipers who served

in Afghanistan. They speak about

ballistics and windage with a

monkish devotion to their craft

and relish the idea of psychologi-

cally tormenting their enemies.

Watching their enemy’s heads

split apart in their scopes is not a

traumatic hazard, they explain.

It’s a job perk.

Gathered around the dining ta-

ble as a soldier sliced vegetables

to drop into a pot of simmering

borscht, I asked why they were

called Smile Platoon.

“Because we can see their fac-

es,” Natalia said. “And we’re hap-

py to kill them.”

But they also described a

Ukrainian defense establishment

and industry mired in Soviet-

style bureaucracy that doesn’t

understand what they do or how

to equip them properly, down to

the ammunition they use and the

rifles they wield.

In a profession when millisec-

onds and millimeters count, the

consequences can be dire.

Ruslan Shpakovych, a sniper

instructor and adviser to units in

and outside the military, said the

problems afflicting the communi-

ty are interrelated, beginning

with gaps in funding that forbid

pricey items, such as high-end

surveillance and monitoring de-

vices. Instead, Shpakovych said,

the snipers rely on Frankenstein

reconnaissance systems pieced

together with digital cameras and

monitors that don’t allow them to

see as far or as well as their coun-

terparts on the battlefield.

Another issue is the kind of

ammunition they are issued. It’s

designed for hunting, but when it

strikes body armor, it tends to

pancake on impact, he explained

during a visit to the team house.

Its trajectory is also marred by

minor disturbances.

“I just recently visited the guys

in Kharkiv,” Shpakovych said,

speaking of the large city in

northeastern Ukraine that days

later was bombarded with Rus-

sian missiles and artillery. “They

were shooting through the

branches. And they were lucky

that the branches weren’t deflect-

ing bullets — a soft bullet can get

deflected by a branch.”

The solution, he said, was to

use steel core ammunition, which

is designed to punch through ar-

mor and heavy enough to main-

tain its trajectory. But factories in

Ukraine don’t produce such am-

munition, he said, and there have

been years-long delays to over-

haul the factory.

There is also no native produc-

tion of the sniper rifles they need

the most. Ukrainian manufactur-

ers make a .308-caliber sniper ri-

fle, but they don’t produce a mili-

tary version of the .338 rifle,

Shpakovych said, which the snip-

ers say is a good solution for most

of their work and reliable for hit-

ting targets a kilometer away.

The supply problem has forced

the snipers to buy their own rifles

with their own money or get

them via donations from non-

profits, such as Come Back Alive,

where Shpakovych works as an

instructor. That has also created

complications, he said, when

Ukrainian import restrictions on

arms through nonmilitary chan-

nels have sometimes held up

gear.

Medik, who goes by a call sign

derived from his medical train-

ing, said it took about three

weeks to receive a rifle and ad-

vanced optic he purchased from

the United States. It cost him

more than $6,000, even after

Shpakovych helped get him a dis-

count. The ad hoc reality of gun

purchases has created a dizzying

mix of weapons, calibers and bar-

rels that are all different, many of

them cheap U.S. models that

wear out too quickly. Everything

must match, Shpakovych said.

While security assistance con-

tinues to flow into Ukraine, it’s

unclear if anyone in the United

States is receptive to the needs of

soldiers closest to the fight. The

United States has provided more

than $1 billion worth of security

assistance to Ukraine in the past

year, but the Ukraine Defense

Ministry and the Pentagon

wouldn’t discuss any of these spe-

cific issues.

“The U.S. will provide defen-

sive assistance to help Ukraine

address the armored, airborne

and other threats it is now fac-

ing,” said Army Lt. Col. César San-

tiago, a Pentagon spokesman. He

did not address questions about

the status of aid most important

to the platoon, including the de-

livery of Barrett MRAD rifles,

which are becoming the standard

issue for U.S. snipers.

“We’ve been promised these

for quite a while,” Shpakovych

said.

Varakin, the commander, was

careful in his assessment of the

supply challenges. He praised the

current Defense Ministry and

military leadership, saying they

are the first senior officials to un-

derstand the utility of snipers on

the battlefield. But his ability to

get the right resources, including

vehicles, has frustrated him at

times.

“Although our army receives

Javelins, we snipers don’t get

enough supplies,” he said. “Even

though the usefulness of our

work becomes more evident.”

Varakin has three rules for his

snipers: abstinence from alcohol,

dedication to service above all

else and a willingness to do any-

thing to achieve high perform-

ance.

The last one leaves Smile Pla-

toon with lighter pockets each

month. Sitting around the dining

table, the snipers pick at smoked

smelt and endlessly browse gun-

maker websites, looking for the

next rifle to buy with a few

months’ worth of salary.

Maybe the gun they were

counting on would reach them in

time for the invasion a few days

later. Maybe it wouldn’t.

Medik contemplated how their

world would change when that

moment arrived, and Russians

would flood the battlefield. It

would provide something per-

haps only a sniper would think

about: a promising opportunity

to hone his craft.

“We’ll just have more work,” he

said. “I hope we’ll have enough

bullets.”

Serhiy Morgunov contributed to this

report.

BY ALEX HORTON

NEVELSKE, Ukraine — A silhou-
ette stood out for just a moment,
which was plenty of time for
Dancer to ready his aim. He
squeezed the trigger, and the pix-
elated human figure was upright
for roughly two seconds until the
sniper’s bullet found its mark,
crumbling the enemy fighter
onto frozen earth.
Smile Platoon lived up to their
name, gathering around the
kitchen table to watch the video
of a recent kill. The snipers
laughed, recounting that the re-
cent operation was the same spot
they had earlier killed Russian-
backed separatists.
“Are they stupid?” one asked in
amused bewilderment. “Are they
immortal?” another bellowed,
watching the handiwork of Danc-
er, the call sign for a sniper whose
ballet training in a past life
helped him silence his footsteps.
One of the soldiers hit play, and
the video rolled again.
My colleague and I visited the
platoon’s team house in the days
before the Russian invasion,
when the platoon kept busy ter-
rorizing separatist fighters out-
side Donetsk, working on a front
line that no longer exists. With
the conflict widening into all-out
war throughout the country, the
platoon has gone dark except for
one message.
“It is war here. These f---ers at-
tacked us,” Serhiy Varakin, the
58th Independent Motorized In-
fantry Brigade sniper platoon
commander, said in a text last Fri-
day to my colleague, also named
Serhiy. “What else can I say?”
My colleague Serhiy has tried a
few times to speak with the com-
mander and hopefully learn they
are doing okay since the invasion.
Their lack of response is under-
standable given their secretive
job and their new reality —
they’re not interested in telling us
what they are doing.
But before then, the Smile Pla-
toon team house was a warm and
inviting place to two outsiders,
where the salo and tea flowed all
day and night.
Natalia, a platoon scout, count-
ed the days on her gunmetal-
painted fingers until her Face-
book ban for creating a second
account was lifted. Vitaliy’s florist
wife dutifully took over her hus-
band’s job on the home front, wa-
tering their vast expanse of pot-
ted plants in his absence. And a
sniper with the call sign Medik fi-
nally got his care package from
the United States: a Weatherby
.338 rifle and advanced optic that
outperforms what his own mili-
tary provides.
The big bang of Ukrainian
sniper units occurred after the
2014 invasion, when the muddy
tangle of trench warfare in the
east forced commanders to shed
Soviet marksman manuals, catch
up to modern technology and kill
more accurately from farther
away.
Their growing proficiency and
professionalization backed by
Western forces has swung a pen-
dulum back at their adversaries,
who often wield superior rifles
and surveillance systems, snipers
in the platoon said. They even ab-
sorb hallmarks of American war -
fighter culture from the soldiers
who helped advise them. Black
Rifle Coffee Co. mugs litter the
living quarters, and at any given
moment, a few of the snipers
crowd around a smartphone,
watching videos of gun influenc-
ers on Instagram.
Ukrainian snipers are an elite
bunch distinct from regular
troops, they are quick to tell you.
I’ve met many like them, first
during my time in Iraq as an
Army infantryman and later
when I became friends with for-

LETTER FROM UKRAINE

On the old front lines, Ukrainian snipers kept busy with motley weaponry

PHOTOS BY SERHIY MORGUNOV FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

The Smile Platoon, a unit of Ukrainian snipers, poses for a photo Feb. 15 in Nevelske. In the days before Russia’s invasion, they had been terrorizing separatist fighters.

BY NITASHA TIKU

TikTok will suspend both live-
streaming and new content from
Russia in response to the coun-
try’s new “fake” news law, TikTok
said Sunday on the video app’s
official communications account
on Twitter.
Signed Friday by President
Vladimir Putin, Russia’s new law
bans what the country calls
“fake” news about its military,
including language that de-
scribes Russia’s attack against
Ukraine as an “invasion,” under
threat of a 15-year prison sen-
tence.
“In light of Russia’s new ‘fake
news’ law, we have no choice but
to suspend live-streaming and
new content to our video service
while we review the safety impli-
cations of this law,” TikTok wrote

on Twitter, noting that its in-app

messaging would continue. “We

will continue to evaluate the

evolving circumstances in Russia

to determine when we might fully

resume our services with safety

as our top priority.”

The law has further silenced

homegrown Russian media voic-

es that until recently were provid-

ing the Russian public with infor-

mation absent from the govern-

ment’s official account on state-

owned media.

Despite TikTok’s increasingly

dominant role as a source of

content on the conflict from both

Russia and Ukraine, the video

app, which is owned by the Chi-

nese company ByteDance, has

been quieter than its Silicon Val-

ley counterparts in disclosing the

company’s policies on disinfor-

mation, fact-checking or censor-

ship.

On Thursday, TikTok represen-

tatives exclusively told The Wash-

ington Post that the company was

developing a policy on how it will

handle state-controlled media on

its platform. Following questions

about TikTok’s choice of words

during the conflict, the company,

which previously described the

invasion as “the situation,” sent a

statement that included the

words “war in Ukraine.”

TikTok has begun applying la-

bels to content from some state-

controlled media accounts. On

TikTok, content from outlets such

as RT now includes a label at the

bottom of the video that says

“Russia state-controlled media,”

with a link to more information.

In late February, days after

Russia invaded Ukraine, both

Facebook and TikTok said they

would ban Russian state media in

Europe, which set the stage for

retaliation from Russia.

The Russian government has

cordoned off social media sites in

recent days, increasing pressure

on tech giants to restrict informa-

tion about the war with Ukraine

and continue publishing state-

backed media on their services.

Russia’s Internet censorship

agency announced plans to block

access to Facebook around the

country on Friday, after throt-

tling access to the social media

site. The agency, Roskomnadzor,

said the country had blocked

Facebook to promote the free

flow of information, blaming the

company’s restrictions on Rus-

sian state media.

Roskomnadzor has been in-

creasing pressure on other tech

giants as well. Twitter also report-

TikTok suspends posting new video from Russia

A Smile Platoon sniper with the call sign Medik sits on his bed Feb. 15 in Nevelske. Funding issues and

supply problems have forced the snipers to buy rifles with their own money or get them via donations.

ed the service was restricted for

some users in Russia, and

Roskomnadzor announced that it

had sent letters to Google and

TikTok.

Meta, Twitter and YouTube did

not respond to request for com-

ment on their approach to the

law.

Cristiano Lima contributed to this

report.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES

TikTok’s policy change followed a Russian ban on “fake” news.