A new video that has surfaced on social media has captured the strange moment on the front lines in Ukraine, where a Russian soldier appears to have been seriously injured after trying to shoot down a Ukrainian drone.

It is not entirely clear what exactly the Russian soldier was trying to doPhoto: video recording – Paul Javin

Footage from another drone shows a Russian soldier looking pretty confident as he takes aim at the sky, judging from the angle he’s shooting at what could just be another drone.

But immediately after that, the Russian soldier seems to get scared and rushes to the ground, shortly after that a small explosion occurred near him.

A few seconds later, a Russian soldier can be seen standing up and running away, albeit with a heavy limp.

The new footage has sparked much speculation on social media as to what actually happened.

Some netizens speculate that a Russian soldier may have tried to shoot down the drone with a Soviet-made man-portable missile launcher (MANPADS), and that the launched missile’s engine failed and it fell to the ground.

But the angle from which the Russian soldier fired the weapon and what can be seen in the footage taken at some distance from him regarding its size seem to refute this hypothesis.

Was a Russian soldier hit by a drone he was trying to shoot down?

A slightly more plausible version would be that the Ukrainian drone he targeted was a commercial one converted to launch small arms ammunition, and that a Russian soldier watched the drone launch a grenade after attempting to shoot it down.

Numerous videos that have appeared on social media in the nearly 12 months since the Russian invasion began on February 24 last year have shown Ukrainian drone operators specializing in launching small munitions at Russian soldiers.

One of them, recently shared by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, showed a group of Russian soldiers quickly abandoning their makeshift bunker and fleeing immediately after a drone dropped a grenade on their position.

Some commentators also noted that the weapon used by the Russian soldier looked like a grenade launcher.

While this hypothesis cannot be ruled out, trying to shoot down a drone with a grenade launcher is at least a strange action for the obvious reason: if you miss the target, the grenade will fall to the ground (and the soldier can be seen aiming almost directly above him in the video).

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