Bombs Away From Ukrainian Drone Seen on Social Media: A new video shared on social media by Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) on Tuesday may suggest that after the war ends, some of the drone operators could do quite well in skill-based arcade/carnival games.
In the 26-second-long clip, a drone is seen hovering over an abandoned Russian BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) and then the operator releases a grenade into an open hatch.
“In no man’s land near Bilohorivka, #Donetsk Oblast, a drone of the 10th Mountain Assault Brigade dropped an F-1 hand grenade inside an abandoned Russian BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle, damaging it,” the caption for the video explained.
The BMP-1 seen in the video appeared to have been mired in a shell crater in muddy conditions.
There have been an increasing number of reports that suggest following early spring rains, as well as a late-season blizzard, the ground in the region has become saturated creating extremely muddy conditions. The Cold War-era IFV may have attempted to take cover from enemy fire when it bogged down alongside a dirt road, forcing its crew to abandon it.
Even small ordnance such as the Soviet-designed F-1 hand grenade would be enough to further disable the vehicle. The fragmentation grenade has an effective radius of 30 meters (98 feet) and about 30 percent of the body splits into 290 high-velocity, sharp-edged splinters, which would cause great damage to the BMP-1’s interior including crucial systems.
Strategically Important Location
The area around the village of Bilohorivka has been the scene of heavy fighting in recent months and is just one part of the larger ongoing Battle of Donbas. Russian forces had captured the nearby villages of Sieverodonetsk and Lysychansk in July 2022 but were driven back in Ukraine’s Kharkiv counteroffensive that began last September.
Bilohorivka has remained strategically important, and Russia attempted to retake the village during its recent offensive earlier this year. As of last month, it has remained under Ukrainian control, but according to recent reports, no structures remain untouched and much of the centuries-old settlement has been razed to the ground.
The Edelweiss Unit
The drone operators were reported to be part of the 10th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade “Edelweiss,” one of the Ukrainian Ground Forces elite units, specifically trained for mountain warfare operations. The unit is based in Kolomyia and is part of the Operational Command West.
The brigade, which has been operational since October 2015, had previously been engaged in fighting with pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas. The 10th Mountain has also seen action in the defense of Marinka, Popasna, Mariupol, and Bakhmut. It was in February that the brigade was granted the honorific “Edelweiss” (Edelʹveis) by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It is a mountain flower belonging to the daisy or sunflower family Asteraceae, while it is also a symbol that has been associated with elite mountain military units, first being used by the Imperial-Royal Mountain Troops of the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1907.
#Ukraine: In no man’s land near Bilohorivka, #Donetsk Oblast, a drone of the 10th Mountain Assault Brigade dropped a F-1 hand grenade inside an abandoned Russian BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle, damaging it. pic.twitter.com/yL5ongKnj9
— ???????? Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 4, 2023
Russian propagandists have tried to suggest that the use of the “Edelweiss” is proof of a “Nazi” connection to Ukraine, despite the fact that the edelweiss is also worn by troops of the 1st Battalion of the United States Army’s 10th Special Forces Group, as well as the fact that there is an anti-Nazi musical number called “Edelweiss” in The Sound of Music.
Author Experience and Expertise
A Senior Editor for 19FortyFive, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu.
