Ukrainian High Court Judges Man Machine Gun, Blow Up Russian Shahed Drone Attacking Kyiv

A Russian kamikaze aircraft got too close to a heavily armed barge manned by three middle-aged judges taking time off from their real jobs in court. They say they need more ammo. Make us preferred on Google Share Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Bluesky Email Copy Copied Ukrainian judges Evhen Kruk (Anti-Corruption court), Viktor Kechun (Supreme Court) and Vitaly Zuiev (Constitutional Court) take a break from volunteer duty at an anti-aircraft position on the Dnipro River, April 27, 2026 (Photo by Stefan Korshak / Kyiv Post) Content Share Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Bluesky Email Copy Copied Flip Make us preferred on Google On Saturday morning, Ukrainian judge Evhen Kruk, instead of listening to lawyer arguments and presiding over an anti-corruption court, fired a Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun from a barge floating on the Dnipro River and blew a Russian kamikaze drone attacking Ukraine’s capital to bits. The morning shootdown confirmed by Kyiv Post with two other eyewitnesses, geo-located video and (even) a certificate issued by Ukraine’s Territorial Defense forces, was only one of the 580 Shahed-type drones destroyed or disabled by Ukrainian air defenses overnight between April 24-25, of the total 619 launched by Russia at Ukraine’s towns and cities. Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official . But for Kruk, 43, and his gun crewmates Supreme Court justice Viktor Kechun, 58, and Constitutional Court Justice Vitaly Zuiev, 48, it was the first air kill of their lives.“When you are shooting, all you think about is hitting the target, firing so that the target flies into the path of your bullets,” Kruk said of the engagement. “You think of nothing else. I didn’t hear the noise of the machine guns at all; everything was focused on what I was shooting at.” Kruk, Kechun and Zuiev are civilians volunteering in Ukraine’s national Territorial Defense Forces (TDF). Between 100,000 and 300,000 Ukrainian civilians, all unpaid volunteers, are thought to serve in the TDF, performing rear-area duties such as guarding critical infrastructure or operating road checkpoints, so that regular army and national guard soldiers might deploy to the front lines. The TDF also augments national air defense. Other Topics of Interest Poland Plans to Test Military Equipment on Ukrainian Front Warsaw aims to use Ukraine’s battlefield experience to test equipment and deepen joint drone and defense industry cooperation. The TDF unit to which the three judges’ gun crew belongs is called Mriya (meaning “aspiration” or “hope” in Ukrainian), a 500-member formation made up of Kyivites taking time off from their regular lives to help with the capital’s air defense. Typical duty is two 24-hour shifts a month. Crews with taxi drivers, roofers and office workers have taken over air watch duty from his group, which is mostly made up of legal industry volunteers, Kruk said. The firing and observation points operated by the group around greater Kyiv are all digitally linked to the Ukrainian Air Force’s real-time mapping, usually displayed on a tablet, showing the location of Russian aircraft anywhere in the country, and where they are heading. Three were in the air during a Kyiv Post visit. If an aircraft comes close enough, the crew gets a 10-minute warning to man weapons. Slacking isn’t easy because the confirmation of readiness is a smartphone image of the crew physically on their guns. The fire position visited by Kyiv Post was a barge built in the Soviet era as floating basic housing for workers with sleeping space, food and water storage and cooking capacity for 20-30 men. It had not moved in at least a decade. TDF volunteers have upgraded the barge with on-shore generators, on-board power banks, heaters, and a mid-grade coffee machine. Digital speed from the civilian phone network is fast. Power supply from the shore is fairly reliable – never a sure thing in wartime Kyiv – but the barge can operate autonomously and maintain heat, and last winter did so, Zuiev said. The hardest part was winter action stations on machine guns for hours at a time, in -20°C (-4°) temperatures, Kruk said. Gunners frequently bring food from home. Mrs. Kuchun’s crepes stuffed with cabbage and Mrs. Kruk’s cottage cheese pancakes, per crew accounts, are popular. In summer, pork fat sandwiches with plenty of garlic are consumed to deter mosquitoes, one gunner said. Weapons stud the roof of the barge’s wheelhouse. The most sophisticated was a NATO-standard Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun, usually called “Ma Deuce” by English-speaking operators. Ukrainian gunners call it a “Browning.” The gun was fitted with a television screen, thermal sights and radar, along with connections allowing the gunner to see the target on the screen and lay down fire on an aerial target using a cross-hair, even in the dark when the aircraft is not visible to the eye. An inspecting Kyiv Post reporter found the M2 loaded and ready for action with a conventional ball/tracer mix in a full ammo box. The M2’s action and extractor arm were lightly oiled, and the weapon was clean and practically dust-free from muzzle to butterfly triggers. Kruk said the gun developed by American arms designer John Browning in the 1920s is reliable and accurate beyond a kilometer (around 1,093 yards). Ukrainian judge Evhen Kruk, national anti-corruption court, stands next to the M2,50 caliber machine gun with which he shot down a Russian Shahed drone on Saturday. Image recorded at an anti-aircraft position on the Dnipro River on April 27 2026 (Photo by Stefan Korshak / Kyiv Post) Kruk told Kyiv Post that practice ammunition is scarce and that the first time he actually fired the M2 was in combat against a Russian drone. It took two engagements, missing other fast-moving targets, to start to get the hang of the weapon enough to kill the third Shahed, he said. Kyiv-based British businessman John Richardson, a former British Army officer, serves as a foreign air defense volunteer standing his share of watches aboard the barge. A volunteer with Ukraine’s special forces in the early months of the war, Richardson said he decided to push for the regularization of foreign volunteer participation in capital air defenses, because he and others want to help. “I decided to do something that is a lot more kinetic than my normal daily work to support and defend this great capital city,” Richardson said. “We are simply reinforcing existing units… As a former professional soldier myself I can tell you this: They [Ukrainian machine gunners] are as deadly against enemy drones as they are ruthless but fair in court – quintessential professionals!” The barge’s most museum-worthy weapon system was four olive-painted Maxim machine guns mounted in a quad to fire simultaneously. An iconic weapon widely used by Russian Imperial and Red Army forces in two world wars and a civil war, the Maxim, formally known as the “Maxim Machine Gun Type 1910” in Ukrainian), is by most modern war standards thoroughly obsolete. Firepower on a barge – (L-R) a US-designed M2 .50 caliber machine gun, four WWI-design machine guns in a quad mount, and a Soviet-era 12.7mm machine gun, all atop an air defense barge moored in the Dnipro River, in an image provided to Kyiv Post on April 28, 2026, by Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces. (Photo via Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces) The oldest Maxim in the barge’s quad mount, observed by Kyiv Post, was a 1930 vintage, making it a rare and certainly museum-worthy PM1910/30 mark, a first-in-series Soviet upgrade of the pre-WWI 1910 version. The factory stamp was from the Tula Arms Factory in Russia. The Soviet Union, in its day, also developed a quad mount so that four Maxim guns might be aimed and fired at once at a flying target. The barge’s quad-mount was, however, not Red Army surplus but newly-welded to Soviet specs. Like the classic quad mount, the Maxim system aboard the barge is fired by pressing the trigger on any one of the four Maxims; the other three shoot automatically. The Ukrainian military issued the group Maxims and the ammunition, but volunteers financed the materials and welding work to build the quad mount, Kruk said. A solid set of stairs leading from the barge’s lower deck to the top of the bridge cabin, where the machine guns are set up, was also paid for by donations, he said. NOTE TO READERS: *Richardson is a pseudonym; this source’s identity is known to Kyiv Post editors. Richardson requested that the Kyiv Post make his contact information available to non-Ukrainians permanently living in the capital region who wish to volunteer for the TDF or offer donations. Kyiv Post supports the prevention of Russian missile and drone strikes. John Richardson +380 63 959 8839 (Signal messaging app only). Stefan Korshak is the Kyiv Post Senior Defense Correspondent. He is from Houston Texas, is a Yalie and since the mid-1990s has worked as correspondent/photographer for newswire, newspapers, television and radio. He has reported from five wars but most enjoys doing articles on wildlife and nature. You can read his weekly blog on the Russo-Ukraine War on Facebook, Substack and Medium. His new book on the 2022 Siege of Mariupol is available on Amazon UK and Amazon US .