Ukraine drone video of Russain soldier’s doomed dump veers from risible to merciless in just seconds

It’s the day after Thanksgiving, things are slow, and everyone is feeling a bit sluggish. That’s the excuse for this post, featuring another Russian soldier caught out by drone pilots in the wrong place – their Ukraine homeless – at the excruciatingly wrong time. Or in other words, herewith another video of a UAV dropping an explosive load on a Russki soldat doing number two – this one a form aerial bathroom humor decidedly short on the yucks.

Put in the popular (for as long as it lasts) vernacular, Ukraine videos of drones sending Russian soldiers fleeing for their lives after being caught relieving themselves is apparently “a thing” now; an established sub-genre in the ever-expanding genus of wartime footage of UAVs striking invading forces. The latest of those was singled out by the New Voice of Ukraine, which – given the subject matter – spoke in pretty merciless tones, even while making light of events.

The publication went live Thursday with an account of a particularly hapless Russian soldier having been compelled to respond to nature’s call in what appears to be the midst of an overgrown wilderness area. Compelled by what the remote circumstances made a rather excessive sense of modesty, the man sought a bit of privacy by crouching behind the only obstruction around. 

Unfortunately, that happened to be a flatbed military truck, which stood out conspicuously in the gazes of Ukraine drone pilots overflying the area at the time, who captured both long and zoom video shots as they zeroed in on their target.

To make what is already an agonizingly long recounting slightly shorter than it could be, the operators of the Ukraine drone rapidly provided a particularly stark example of how “war is hell,” capturing video evidence of just how pitiless and brutal the conflict has made combatants on both sides as they did so. 

Things have changed a lot since the youthful George Orwell, while fighting as a volunteer with Republican forces in Spain, refused to shoot a Fascist soldier he’d lined up in his sights – unwilling, he later wrote, to add literal injury (or worse) to the insult of his would-be target having to escape after being caught (also literally) with his pants down. The Russian fighter was given no such mercy, or at little as he’d have doubtless granted had the the tables been turned.

Indeed, most responses to the social media post of the footage echoed the tone of the New Voice of Ukraine by making light of what in any other scenario would have registered as a truly grim act. Instead, it was clearly interpreted and accepted as one of the gruesome and inhumane ways Ukraine’s legitimate and just national defensive struggle is being fought. 

Among those who replied, @Wanha Sukka had perhaps the most Orwellian of reactions to the Russian soldier’s singularly ignoble demise, expressing a sentiment that manifestly didn’t inhabit Vladimir when he launched the brutal invasion – and which Ukraine fighters can’t afford to dwell upon in the existential struggle to preserve their nation’s independence: “I don’t know whether to pity or not attacking a man at moment he is the most vulnerable.”  

Image: Karl Greif/Unsplash