Ukraine Relies on Century-Old Machine Gun

Six years after Ukraine first found itself embroiled in armed conflict with Russia and its proxies, the country continues to rely heavily on stocks of Soviet-era aircraft, vehicles, weapons, and other military equipment, derivatives thereof, or newish designs that leverage those existing resources in some way. In one particularly extreme example, a recent video clip from the front lines shows that the Ukrainian military is still actively using the M1910 Maxim machine gun, a design that predates World War I.

The video, which originally aired as part of a segment on Ukraine's Channel 5 television network and has been circulating on social media since at least Jan. 31, 2020, shows a member of the Ukrainian armed forces manning the M1910 machine gun in an unspecified location in the country's Luhansk Oblast.