At the start of the 2014 conflict, UAF sniper establishment was chiefly equipped with the Dragunov SVD rifles, adopted in 1963. Naturally, these weapons were insufficiently effective against distant targets, though were quite suitable for city fighting. Sniping was never a priority in Ukraine, the army looked upon it coolly, with the SBU spetsnaz and the 3 rd and 8 th Special Operations Regiments of the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukrainian MOD being the main proponents of sniping. It was a sniper from the 3 rd Regiment who claims the first recorded effective shot from a sniper rifle on May 25, 2014 near the Donetsk airport. For the sake of completeness, one should add these specialists also had a very small number of examples of Western sniper weapons bought before the coup. Moreover, Ukraine’s MVD had semi-automatic Fort-301 rifles built by the Vinnitsa-based Fort plant. This weapon uses the NATO 7,62Ñ…51mm round, and is a copy of the Israeli Galil Sniper rifle which in tur
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