Chilling video shows a doomed Russian soldier in a terrifying cat-and-mouse ordeal with a Ukrainian killer drone
- A video released by a Ukrainian activist appears to show a drone hunting down a Russian soldier.
- The video shows a soldier desperately trying to avoid the drone by ducking in and out of cover.
Dramatic video footage released on Telegram appears to show a Ukrainian drone hunting down a Russian soldier, highlighting the terror soldiers face from new battlefield technology.
A clip posted by the Ukrainian lawyer and social activist Serhii Sternenko shows the drone chasing the soldier across a bleak war-torn landscape. The soldier desperately tries to avoid the drone by ducking in and out of cover.
Part of the footage is taken from the attacking drone's point of view, while the rest offers a panoramic view of the incident taken from a drone further away.
Alongside the video, which was posted to Telegram, Sternenko wrote: "The Signum unit of the 93rd Brigade found a Russian officer and began to pursue him with an FPV drone. The occupier ran away for a long time, hid, pretended to be dead, and shot back with a pistol."
"But none of this saved him — he was eventually eliminated."
The drone eventually catches up with the soldier and impacts next to him. Footage from the second drone shows the explosion and appears to show the soldier's lifeless body on the ground.
Insider could not independently verify the video's exact location and date. Chryons on the video include the insignia of Ukraine's 93rd Mechanized Brigade. A military and defense website, MilitaryLand.net, reported on October 1 that the brigade, at least partly, was fighting on the front south of Bakhmut
The video was also shared on Reddit, where many users noted the horrors of modern warfare that soldiers face on the battlefield.
One user said it was "the stuff of nightmares," while another said it reminded them of "watching wolves chase caribou. It's all about stamina, agility and speed. Looks like the Russian had agility but ran out of stamina."
A second Ukrainian military video uploaded to X on Friday, formerly Twitter, on Visegrad 24, appears to portray a similar event. A Ukrainian drone is seen zig-zagging through a forest of bomb-blasted trees stripped of their branches and leaves before stopping beside a Russian dugout where at least one soldier is huddling.
On Thursday, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X that "every day, Ukrainian warriors use drones to strike enemy positions with pinpoint accuracy."
Russia and Ukraine have relied heavily on drones in the war, both on the battlefield and to hit strategically significant targets. Russia has also used drones to bomb Ukrainian cities and civilian targets.
Ukraine has used combat drones such as the Turkish battle-tested Bayraktar TB2 to devastating effect in its fight against Putin's invading forces, while it has also frequently used sea drones to attack Russia's Black Sea Fleet.
Russia has often turned to the Shahed-136 exploding drone in the war, and it has even started building its own versions of the Iranian-made drone, which it calls the Geran-2.