The Ukrainian sniper of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), who set a new world record by hitting a Russian soldier from a distance of 3.8 kilometers, is Vyacheslav Kovalskyi, writes the Wall Street Journal.

Kowalski had been standing in place for hours in near-freezing temperatures when the order came to fire on a Russian soldier nearly four kilometers away.

How the shot was fired when the bullet hit the target in 9 seconds

Before dusk on November 18, 58-year-old former businessman Kovalskyi and his observer took up a position across the Dnipro River from a Russian base in the Kherson region. The spotter is the sniper’s combat partner, the one who calculates distance, wind speed, and other variables.

Two men who are part of the military counter-intelligence unit of the SBU were watching groups of Russian soldiers cutting down the forest. They believed that the ranks of these people were too small to shoot.

Around noon, a group of five soldiers appeared, and Kowalski noticed that one of them was giving instructions, suggesting that he might be an officer. The observer went to work. He used a laser to measure the distance to the soldiers. Using specialized software and weather data, he concluded that there was a strong wind that would have moved the bullet about 200 meters off course, the Wall Street Journal reports.

He calculated humidity and temperature, factors affecting the bullet’s speed of travel. Even the rotation and curvature of the Earth must be considered for long shots. Using all of these parameters, Kowalski fired a test shot about 1,000 meters away from the target.

It was a miss, the observer told him. They miscalculated the wind speed. He quickly adjusted the gun, reloaded and took aim. “You have to (shoot) right away because the wind is constantly changing,” Kowalskiy said.

“You can do it,” said his proofreader, and Vyacheslav Kovalsky pulled the trigger, the bullet hit the target in about nine seconds, bent and fell.

“Master of the Horizon”

The record hit was made by a SBU specialist with a multi-caliber Ukrainian-made sniper rifle “Volodar Obriyu” (in English “Volodar horizontu”, in Romanian “Volodar horizontu”), Defense Blog notes.

This rifle uses a new .50 caliber cartridge known as the 12.7x114HL (the HL is believed to be derived from the Horizon’s Lord).

The previous record for the distance belonged to a Canadian special forces sniper (name withheld), who in 2017 managed to hit at a distance of 3,540 m, surpassing the record of an Australian sniper – 2,815 m.