Free Republic

For more than 50 years, the Russian army has fielded a beastly semi-automatic sniper rifle called the Dragunov. Now the rifle’s developer has pulled back the curtain from its potential replacement, the SVK, at a major Moscow arms show. The SVK is a semi-automatic 7.62 x 54R-millimeter weapon designed to support infantry on the battlefield. Kalashnikov Concern — which absorbed Dragunov maker Izhevsk in 2013 — claims the SVK “was designed with input from active duty snipers of several Russian Special Forces units.”

Refugees shot fleeing North Korea Michael Sheridan in Hunchun, China North Korean guards, newly armed with Russian Dragunov sniper rifles, have shot dead refugees attempting to ford the river that divides their hungry homeland from China, according to human rights campaigners. On the Chinese shore alone, two bodies, marked by several bullet holes, were found by a local activist, said Tim Peters, an American pastor who runs a Christian group supporting the fugitives. The shootings indicate a coordinated change in tactics by North Korea and China to deter refugees from crossing. They want to stamp out bribery among border guards...

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday said he plans to buy 5,000 Dragunov sniper rifles from Russia to protect the oil-rich nation from a possible U.S. invasion. The self-styled socialist revolutionary and open critic of Washington has bolstered the OPEC nation's weaponry by buying planes, helicopters and assault rifles from Russia to prepare for a guerrilla-style resistance to a foreign invader. "I'm going to buy 5,000 Dragunov rifles from Russia ... with telescopic sight, the best in the world, with infrared night-view," Chavez said during his weekly Sunday broadcast held on a beach along Venezuela's eastern coast....