What I'm watching this week on YouTube: Russo-Ukranian War Videos

Somehow a POV (point of view) video from a soldier fighting in the ongoing Russo-Ukranian war landed in my feed.

It turns out that many soliders strap a GoPro on their helmet when they go into battle and publish the footage on YouTube, giving people a perspective of warfare that they might never have otherwise seen.

The footage is not unlike a modern war video game, except these are of course real people and real bullets and artillery being fired in all directions.

In a lot of the videos fighting takes place in trenches. I personally had thought modern warfare was more about computer-aimed missiles launched from far away, but I was quite shocked to see what was actually happening.

Although videos are censored with pixelisation of people being shot and corpses, I am extremely surprised what the usually cautious YouTube allow to be published.

Some examples of some fighting action are Face to face with the enemy: trench battles of the 3rd SAB for the "road of life" to Bakhmut and Last phase of 2023 offensive: fierce fighting by the 3rd Brigade on the way to liberating Andriivka.

Some of the video-takers appear to have become famous and subscribers often help with donations so they can purchase weapons and equipment. "Arnie" is an example and I saw some of his videos on the Civ Div channel, such as Arnie’s Most INTENSE Combat GoPro Compilation. This one has some disturbing video of how drones are used to take out enemy soldiers.

Then you have videos like Finnish jaegers survive a BMP-2 in Ukraine. People from other countries bravely volunteer to come and fight in this war. As far as I can tell, in this video a group of foreigners drive to a battle field, briefly engage in some combat and then one gets shot in the foot. Then comes the attempt to get the injured man to help. The path back to the car is checked but it seems the car has been fired upon by an enemy tank and is on fire. "There goes my Nissan," says one of the men, "I still haven't paid for that car."

It turns out their possessions and supplies were all in the car. Plan B is to call in a medical evacuation vehicle, which they do, but they still need a clear path to the road. When faced with a stubborn gate our hero first tries to kick it open then resorts to a hand grenade and when that doesn't work, his automatic rifle. Then he finds an alternative exit.

I won't total ruin the video for you any more than I have, so you will have to watch it to see if it has a happy ending.