Special group "Strelki"

Competitions of snipers of special services confirmed: FSB is the main law enforcement agency in Russia

The sniper evened out his breath. In the scope, he saw an armed terrorist who was hiding behind a hostage - a blonde with a baby in her arms. The distance for a shot in such a situation was the limit, more than three hundred meters. The commando pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the child in the head. “Minus a hundred,” the judge recorded. In sniper competitions, shooters have the opportunity to correct a mistake and finish the job. “In reality, after a sniper misses, the command to assault is given, and then who will figure out whose bullet killed the hostage,” one of the sniper specialists who judged at those competitions told Newsweek.

Competitions were held in the Kuban at the end of September. Sniper pairs of various special forces competed - both Russian and foreign. Despite the international status, these competitions are primarily important for the Russian security forces - they could be used to judge the level of training of the special forces elite. Here the judges were in for a surprise.

I was surprised by the low results of the best parts of the Ministry of Defense - the GRU special forces. They were bypassed by everyone - even snipers from OMON and Gosnarkokontrol. FSB snipers received gold and silver, and Ukrainians earned bronze. “For the first time, it became absolutely clear that there is a whole gulf between the training of FSB specialists and army snipers,” one of the judges said on condition of anonymity. The GRU now hopes that the shameful defeat will spur the officials of the Ministry of Defense, and more attention will be paid to army training.

“Nothing surprising. The results of the competition are a reflection of the state's priorities,” the judge says. FSB - in favor, the army - in the corral. According to him, in the centers of the FSB "Alpha" and "Vympel" there is an opportunity to train every day, making a hundred shots per training session. The best specialists, including civilians, who are champions in sports shooting, are taught to shoot there. And army snipers shoot two or three times a month, and then they perform only regular exercises. “Many who now serve in the FSB started out in military intelligence,” a former GRU officer told Newsweek. Now, he worries, the best specialists are fleeing the army.

Army special forces show excellent results only in camouflage competitions - they were clearly helped by real combat experience. The sniper, together with the understudy, had to build a shelter in an open field in four hours. During this time, one of the FSB teams even managed to build a full-fledged bunker from logs, but did not receive points for this: the bunker was considered an excellent target for the tank. Separate points were awarded to those who guessed to set a distracting decoy or mine approaches to themselves.

The “comfortability” of the position was also taken into account. In a combat situation, a sniper is forced to sit in an ambush without getting out for hours, so those who were able to equip themselves with a toilet got extra points. Someone was digging a trench with a latrine in the corner, and one soldier said that he manages with diapers. He, a hefty kid with a tattoo "Afghanistan 1987-1989", was taken at his word. The choice of location, the engineering equipment of the position and the waste from it - all these indicators were at the height of the GAErushmen. But the shooting itself they failed miserably.

The competition also showed which weapons Russian shooters prefer. “It’s better to hit once with a PM than miss twice with a Glock,” the fighters joked, but in the end it turned out that almost everyone had foreign rifles. The regular weapon of the Russian sniper - the Dragunov sniper rifle - was owned by only one shooter from the Kalmyk UFSB team, which took the penultimate place in the overall standings. Another Russian model, the SV-98, showed itself much better. The teams armed with this rifle even made it into the top ten. But there were problems with her too: the shooter from the Krasnodar OMON team cracked the stock right during the “sniper duel”.

Other units used imported weapons: British, German and American. The snipers themselves are not complex about this: patriotism has a bad effect on the results. Another thing is the uniform. Many judges were shocked when the FSB gunmen came out to receive awards in American camouflage. “This is not the same as shooting from an English rifle, you have to put on your uniform for the awards,” one of the experienced snipers could not calm down. - Ask any officer who our real enemy is, and he will answer you - NATO. And these show-offs are more expensive than the Motherland.