Ukraine War Footage Shows Russian Desperation? Viral footage shared online (see below) from the war in Ukraine this week by Russian Telegram accounts appears to show a Russian UAV dropping a grenade on a Ukrainian position, cradled in a single-use plastic cup.
The grenade can be seen in the center of the shot dangling in a plastic drinking cup before being dropped on the ground. An explosion and a small burst of smoke can be seen on the ground as the drone rotates and flies at a higher altitude.
One Russian Telegram post added a caption to the video, apparently praising the inventiveness of Russian forces.
“This is how our guys throw gifts on the head of the enemy,” the post reads.
“’Necessity is cunning for invention’ is a folk saying,” the post continued, per Google Translate.
The footage went viral as Russian troops faced a shortage of precision-guided missiles, with troops reportedly resorting to Soviet-era “dumb” bombs that have no onboard guidance systems.
Little information about the footage has been shared by the Telegram accounts, but was shared widely by Russian-language channels and described as a Russian attack against Ukrainian soldiers.
After spending the last ten years investing in the development of new UAV systems that utilize artificial intelligence, the footage hardly paints Russia’s military capabilities in a good light.
Makeshift Weapons?
In March, Forbes reported that Russia had lost over $5 billion in military equipment since the invasion began on February 24. Barely weeks into the conflict, Russia lost over 2,500 pieces of military equipment to Ukrainian forces.
Here’s an interesting one. Drone with a grenade… in a plastic cup? pic.twitter.com/ebxie91iQP
— Gissur Simonarson ??????????? (@GissiSim) May 16, 2022
Meanwhile, Russian weapons manufacturers struggle to keep up with demand and face additional hurdles in the form of Western sanctions. Without access to technology and components designed in the United States and other NATO countries, Russian troops are getting creative.
In April, a video released by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense showed a Ukrainian soldier taking apart a Russian Orlan-10 drone. Inside, the soldier found a consumer-grade DSLR camera made by Canon, a plastic bottle cap replacing the fuel tank lid, and duct tape holding parts of the drone’s casing together.
“This is seriously real, not fake,” the soldier can be heard saying in the footage. “We even thought of sending this ‘cosmic’ technology to our Western partners.”
The video clip quickly went viral and was one of the earliest signs that Russia struggled to provide its soldiers with the weapons needed to succeed in Ukraine.
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
