A single bullet. A moving target. A distance of more than a mile. In December 2024, a Ukrainian special forces sniper known only as Lektor hit a moving Russian soldier at 2,069 meters with one shot — standing in a trench, nearly level with his target. Now, an American Marine veteran has traveled to Ukraine’s front lines to document the man behind that shot.
Colby Barrett, a former Marine officer who attended scout sniper school alongside his platoon — an unusual move for an officer — first traveled to Ukraine not as a filmmaker, but as a man of faith. He had turned down a friend’s invitation to join an aid convoy, busy with four kids in school and a harvest underway. But that night, he read about pastors being killed and churches destroyed by Russian forces. He made the trip. Then he kept going back.
Barrett has since produced two documentary series on the conflict: A Faith Under Siege and Faith in War. The latter includes Safe Ground, which follows a Green Beret who removes landmines in Ukraine. Despite calling himself “not a filmmaker,” Barrett’s work has brought remarkable stories from the war to American audiences.
During those trips, Barrett heard about Lektor — a special forces sniper from Ukraine’s Department of Active Measures within the Defence Intelligence directorate. Lektor’s December 2024 shot, fired with a single .338 Lapua Magnum round from a Sako TRG M10, has drawn international attention. Barrett’s crew eventually spent a morning on the range with Lektor’s unit, and a short documentary on their time together is now in production.
The Shot
The circumstances surrounding the record-distance kill were anything but controlled. Lektor’s team had spent two weeks on the zero line watching for a Russian assault, under strict orders not to fire. When those orders changed and the unit was set to move, Lektor asked for more time.
“So I simply begged the commander: give us a day or two for free hunting,”
he told Barrett’s crew in an interview translated from Ukrainian.
Lektor spotted a soldier whose equipment distinguished him from regular infantry. The man was walking along a tree line at a steady pace and at a workable angle. Just before the shot, his spotter called out a wind correction — in the wrong direction.
“I managed to shout: recalculate, something’s wrong,”
Lektor said. The correction was fixed in seconds, while the target was still moving. One shot connected.
Barrett noted that the longest confirmed .338 Lapua kill on record belongs to British Cpl. Craig Harrison, who hit a target at 2,475 meters in Afghanistan in 2009 — after several sighting rounds. Barrett described shots like that as
“really more like competition shooting.”
Lektor shares that skepticism about how such records are ranked.
“Two shots maximum: if you didn’t hit, that’s it,”
Lektor said.
“That’s how you should compare.”
The Escape
Within half an hour of firing, enemy drones were overhead.
“The only thing that saved us was that the enemy didn’t expect a shot from such a distance,”
Lektor said. Russian forces shelled an area roughly 500 meters away. His team hid in a dugout for a full day before slipping out.
The battlefield has since grown more dangerous. Thermal cameras now scan for the heat signature of suppressors.
“After a shot, a simple suppressor can give you away, because it’s hot, it glows,”
Lektor said. Early in the war, he walked about a kilometer to a firing position. Now he walks eight.
The Role of Snipers in a Drone War
Barrett pressed Lektor on a question many military observers are asking: are snipers even relevant on a battlefield increasingly dominated by drones? Lektor admitted the role is
“a little outdated”
but argued it is far from obsolete.
“Snipers, in my opinion, are the neurosurgeons,”
he said, explaining that a sniper team can maintain near-continuous observation of a sector.
“Drones have to return to recharge, they get shot down.”
Barrett noted a broader contrast between the two sides. Ukraine, he said, moves quickly to adapt to new technology, while Russia wages the war like a meat grinder:
“If I just put so much meat into it, that it breaks the grinder, then we’ll win.”
Lektor echoed that assessment after his team killed a Russian sniper near Bakhmut, only to learn from a neighboring unit that he was the fifth sniper killed at that same position.
“They have absolutely no regard for the lives of their own men,”
Lektor said.
A Father and Son at War
Lektor’s son enlisted before him. The two have served together for most of the war. When Barrett’s crew asked about it, Lektor’s answer was direct.
“He’s my child, I have to be there,”
he said.
While Lektor was hospitalized with wounds, his son was fighting near Chasiv Yar with a separate team. Of the four men in that group, his son was the only one to emerge unharmed.
Lektor keeps one rule for his own team — a principle that defines his leadership as much as his marksmanship.
“I [am] the first to go in and the last to come out,”
he said.
“That’s our unwritten rule.”
Barrett, who was trained as a scout sniper during a Marine Corps era that has since closed that school and folded sniper training into reconnaissance and Raider units under Force Design 2030, said he was struck not by Lektor’s extraordinary marksmanship, but by his character.
“I was struck by just his humility,” Barrett said.
Lektor, a former gamekeeper, pushed back on any suggestion of elite status.
“Honestly, I don’t consider myself a super expert,”
he said.
“This is my job for the duration of the war.”
Barrett’s documentary on Lektor is expected to be released as part of his ongoing coverage of the conflict. His previous work can be found through A Faith Under Siege and Faith in War. For more veterans coverage, including stories on the flight nurses of the Pacific who saved thousands of Marines and errors in disability cases for ‘painful scars’ that resulted in overpayment, additional reporting is available from Military Times. Other recent news includes the death of Tom Skerritt, Air Force veteran and Top Gun star, at 93, and a Virginia man arrested after the Quantico Iwo Jima statue was defaced with a sledgehammer.
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