A video circulating online shows a tense showdown between a Russian mobile air defense team and an approaching Ukrainian mid-range strike drone. The gunner opens fire with a machine gun as the drone closes in, trying to knock it out of the sky before it arrives. At the very last moment, he gives up on the fight, abandons his position, and sprints for cover. He then watches from a distance as the drone slams into his machine-gun position and destroys it.

Mobile fire groups like this one, which usually pair a machine gun with a vehicle or a fixed spot, have become a common answer to the drone threat on both sides of the war, and machine-gun fire can bring drones down. But the clip shows what happens when a strike drone survives the bullets and keeps coming, because a gun position is a fixed target that cannot outrun it. The date, exact location, and original source of the footage have not been independently verified, and videos like this are usually released by one side to show its own successes. Questions remain about the type of drone, whether anyone else was in the crew, and whether the gunner's quick decision to run is what saved him.