A Russian soldier gives a drone the finger moments before the unmanned aerial vehicle dropped a bomb on his platoon, footage released by a Ukrainian official showed.
In the video, six Russian soldiers are milling around an armored personnel carrier parked next to a building. As the drone’s camera zooms in, one of the soldiers looks up at the drone and gives it a one-fingered salute. An audio track from the movie Taken, in which Liam Neeson’s ex-special forces and CIA character threatens his daughter’s kidnappers over the phone, plays in the background of this part of the drone footage.
After the Russian soldier makes the gesture, German composer Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” plays in the background as the drone drops a munition on the armored vehicle, reportedly a BTR-82A armored personnel carrier, and the building next to it. In the aftermath of the strike, the armored vehicle appears to be destroyed, the building is damaged, and one person can be seen rushing out of the building.
The video, which is heavily edited, was shared on social media by Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the minister of internal affairs of Ukraine, on Sunday. The authenticity of the video could not be confirmed, but the location of the vehicle and the building before and after the blast appeared to look similar. It is unclear when the video was taken.
Gerashchenko said the video was shot in the Zaporizhzhia region of eastern Ukraine and that the strike was the work of the special forces of the 15th Main Directorate of the Security Service of Ukraine.
Sources: Washington Examiner; Twitter