“I am here. We are not putting down arms. We will be defending our country, because our weapon is truth, and our truth is that this is our land, our country, our children. And we will defend all of this.”
So I spent the vast majority of this fucked-up nightmare hell week planning to write about the Ghost of Kiev becoming the first fighter ace of the 21st century (and doing it in the MiG-29 Foxbat, which, in my books, is one of the most badass-looking fighter planes of all time), but sadly the more we learn about that it’s starting to look like that story is more propaganda than reality, and instead of having some insane fighter ace blowing the asses off of enemy bombers it turned out he was just a dude that was really good at Digital Combat Simulator. Then I thought, fuck it, I’ll just write about the Ukrainian people, who are out there lobbing Molotovs at BMPs, running in front of tanks to block them from advancing, and manning hand-dug trenches with a makeshift civilian army comprised largely of pissed off computer programmers with assault rifles.
Then, finally, I decided, no – I am going to write about the guy who is inspiring those people to do that shit. The man who is serving as the primary beacon of Resistance against Russian aggression in the world despite being completely outgunned and outnumbered, remaining defiant in the face of airstrikes, artillery and Chechen assassins, bolstering the morale of his citizens to stand and fight for their land and their country.
It’s pretty nuts that the Ukrainian people elected their version of Sasha Baron Cohen as their President and he ended up turning into their version of Winston Churchill. And what better indicator of how weird the world is right now that the dude who voiced the Ukrainian dub of Paddington Bear is out there threatening Vladimir Putin, the only G8 world leader who has probably actually killed another human with his bare hands?
And, sure, in the days and weeks following the publication of this article many parts of these stories may change, and many new heroes and heroes will surface, and certainly Zelensky’s story will progress in ways we cannot possibly foresee right now. Hell, maybe the Ghost of Kiev is real, and the reports of him scoring his 20th kill aren’t complete bullshit. Maybe some noble 21st century Stanislav Petrov will prevent the nuclear annihilation of Earth, or maybe it’ll turn out that the Ukrainian Reaper is truly some hardass real-life Slavic Simo Hayha who is out there single-handedly defending Kyiv (sorry, I am going to seriously struggle to not keep calling it Kiev, but I have 40 years of conditioning working against me here) by haphazardly flailing his blue-and-yellow ballsack around like the business arm of an industrial construction crane. But, for right now, the guy at the center of all this is President Zelensky, and I just wanted to take a minute this week to appreciate how the Ukrainian people elected this guy:
And somehow ended up with this:
Because, I mean, that shit is like the Ukraine War version of that damn Travolta meme where they put those driving clips from Grease and Pulp Fiction next to each other and use it as a metaphor for how the last two years took our already-miserable lives and somehow turned our nine-to-five soul-sucking day jobs into the sort of nostalgic experiences that makes us sincerely long for the days when the biggest stressors in our weekday was that nobody could never remember the goddamn passcode to get in to the break room at the office.
Born in the Ukraine in 1978 to a family of Russian Jews, Zelensky’s dad was a Professor of Cybernetics and his Mother was an engineer. His grandfather served with the Soviet Red Army fighting Nazis during World War II, where he marched through to Berlin and helped avenge the fact that his father and three of his brothers were murdered in Nazi Death Camps. So, naturally, coming from a badass line of war heroes, engineers and possible Skynet programmers, Zelensky got his law degree, learned to speak three languages, and graduated from the prestigious Kiev National Economic University.
Then he fucked off his law profession and became a professional comedian.
In 1995 Zelensky founded a comedy company called Kvartal 95, did a bunch of sketch shows, an eventually went on to win a national Russian comedy contest called KVN in 1997. He turned his comedy career into television and film, where he stared in a bunch of rom-coms, goofy TV shows, and what I generally understand to be roughly the Ukrainian version of the American Pie films – which, of course, I am picturing as just being exactly like American Pie except everyone’s wearing those fur caps with the flaps over the ears and has a working knowledge of how to field-strip an AK-47. In 2006 he was the Season One winner of Dancing with the Stars Ukraine, proving that this dude knows his way around a salsa or two, and then in the 2010s he voiced Paddington in the Ukrainian dubs of both Paddington films – which I also haven’t seen, but the trailers looked pretty fucking adorable, in so much as I am allowed to suggest that anything might be “adorable” while writing text for this website.
Still, you have to admit — there’s not much in her to suggest that ten years later this guy was going to be taking video selfies in a flak jacket going full Sean Connery First Knight “Never Give Up, Never Surrender” to inspire armed resistance against Russian armored vehicles while dodging artillery shells and KGB sniper fire.
In 2015 Zelensky launched the TV show Servant of the People, where he played a school teacher who accidentally got elected President of the Ukraine, and then has to kind of stumble his way through the political system. It was a comedy, and most of the cover art of it has a very Mister Bean vibe to it, though some of the publicity photos I saw for it include Zelensky waving a couple Uzis around the Ukrainian parliament, presumably as part of his character’s new “anti-Corruption” platform, so who knows what was going on there. Foreign comedy is pretty much universally weird, and if you’ve ever tried to watch any foreign-language comedy I can pretty much guarantee that there was at least one moment during the film that left you thinking something along the lines of, “Shit, is this the kind of thing that they think is funny over there?” I don’t speak Ukrainian, I don’t know any Ukrainian people, and I’ve never seen the show, so I’m not going to really comment on it further other than to say that shit is banned in Russia these days.
Except it’s worth mentioning that this dude was a fucking comedian who played the President on television for three years and did it so successfully that in 2019 he was elected the actual goddamn President of the Ukraine.
Zelensky defeated a billionaire business tycoon, earned an incredible 73% of the vote, and was elected as the first Jewish President of the Ukraine in 2019, which, I mean, I really want to stress this — this isn’t like electing Martin Sheen during the height of the West Wing success, or electing Dennis Haysbert after the first season of 24. This guy was a lifetime comedian, and his show was a comedy. And now he’s out there negotiating military deals with NATO and calling Vladimir Putin a motherfucker in front of the United Nations General Assembly. And people are rallying around him all around the world as a beacon of light and hope and defiant resistance in the face of overwhelming hostile resistance – a leader of freedom fighters opposing a violent takeover of their native land with fistfuls of flaming molotovs and rocket-propelled grenades.
Before this whole “Land War in Europe” thing went down, the shit Zelensky was best known for most in the U.S. was the whole Trump Impeachment phone call, which I don’t really want to talk about a whole lot right here because I think it’ll detract from the things I actually do want to talk about. Essentially, Zelensky was given a choice – dig up dirt on Hunter Biden, or we’ll probably revoke the $200 million in military aid that Congress appropriated to send to you. Zelensky said no, which, even though he could have used some of those anti-tank weapons right about now, was still probably the safe call – his objective was to get a NATO invite from the US government, and he couldn’t afford to take sides right before the election.
Well, between that stuff, then Covid, and now Putin, the actually political career of Vlodymyr Zelensky wasn’t exactly action-packed. It took him a while to get up to speed, and he tried to introduce legislation to bring peace to the Donbas region and end corruption in the Ukraine, but his polling numbers were pretty middling. Some folks liked him, some thought he needed to do more to battle corruption, and, presumably, all the corrupt people were kind of hoping he’d do less to stop corruption. He was… fine. He did his job.
That all changed a week ago.
On February 24, 2022, the Russian Federation launched a full-scale invasion of the Ukraine, marking the first time we’ve had a real land war in Europe since the Yugoslav Wars of the 90s. Enemy tanks, aircraft, armored vehicles, and trucks began flooding into the country from three directions, supported by artillery fire and airstrikes, aimed at encircling, surrounding, and occupying the population centers at Kyiv, Karkiv, and the Crimea. 44 year old comedian Volodymyr Zelensky suddenly became a wartime leader, despite having no combat experience beyond filming that bit with the Uzis. The Russians – and probably most of the Western powers – figured he’d cave. This would be too much. The Ukraine couldn’t hold, they were facing too much opposition, and, fuck, most of them probably would rather be part of Russia anyways and would just surrender the first time a T-80 pointed its coax at them.
That is not what happened.
When the war started, Zelensky had the opportunity to evacuate. As a VIP, he could have easily been swept out of the country in the early hours of the fighting, and he could be sitting up in a Barcalounger eating Pierogies and drinking high-end vodka in Warsaw right now while a line of European foreign ministers promise him that they’re “fully committed” to helping Ukraine and are willing to take acts as extreme and defiant as not selling Putin any model year 2023 Mercedes and not letting Russia play their national anthem when they compete in the World Cup later this year. And, in fact, that’s exactly what Russian media posted that he was doing – the story broke within hours of the attack that the Comedy President had shit his pants, taken the first private jet out of the Ukraine, scurried to the safety of his fuzzy European slippers, and abandoned his people to their fate.
And a lot of people believed it. Until, later that day, Zelensky posted a video of himself standing outside Parliament in the middle of a goddamn artillery storm. Then he went out and authorized the Ukrainian Tax Office to release a statement saying that if you capture enemy tanks and weapons in battle you don’t need to declare it as assets on your 2022 Tax Return.
It’s true that the US had tried to evacuate him. It’s also true that he told them, “The fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride.” So now, with enemy troops hunting him, a wall of tanks just 20 miles from his palace doors, Russian bombers streaking overhead, the impressive Russian botnet demonizing him as a Nazi (even though his entire family was literally killed by Nazis) and the rest of the world leaving him to face the daunting Russian War Machine alone, fucking Volodymyr Zelensky is out there making Instagram videos urging his people to fight the invaders with everything they have.
And they are. The people of Ukraine have rallied in huge numbers, fighting with everything they have, and, against all odds, they’ve managed to hold the goddamn Russian Army back for over a week.
I’m not sure how this is going to end for Zelensky – it’s too early to tell right now. There was a story just today that he survived three assassination attempts on his life – two by the elite Wagner Group, a PMC of mostly former GRU special forces guys, and one by Chechen Special Forces – all of which were thwarted before they could reach the Ukrainian President. But here, in this moment, this guy’s a damn war hero. He’s an inspiration to the West, watching him stand defiantly against foreign aggression to defend his home soil against an invading army that outnumbers him massively, and while the rest of the West has responded to his pleas for military aid by canceling iPhone shipments or seizing superyachts or whatever other useless shit they’re doing, he’s out there dodging assassins, negotiating for humanitarian corridors to safely evacuate his people, and inspiring defiant resistance from a bombed-out bunker in a capital city that is becoming increasingly besieged.
And you have to think that the only thing more embarrassing to Putin than failing to overrun a country he probably thought he’d capture in 48 hours is the fact that the world is becoming increasingly more aware that he no longer has the biggest balls of any world leader in the former Soviet Bloc.
“When you attack us you will see our faces – not our backs, but our faces.”
The ironies of contemporary world history are many and sometimes profound. Recently, complicated politics in post-Soviet Eastern Europe dragged a number of towering ironies before the eyes of the world during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. One of these ironies is the fact that many of the weapons being used by both sides were created during the Cold War by the now-dead U.S.S.R. empire — an empire whose geography Russia now seems to be attempting to reacquire.
For example, contemporary derivatives of the Kalashnikov assault rifle can be seen in the streets of Kherson, Mariupol and Kyiv, and even the humble Makarov pistol has been used in limited numbers. But another old 20th-century Soviet weapon is fighting-on here in the 21st with a renewed importance: the RPG-7 recoilless, shoulder-fired, rocket-assisted grenade launcher.
The Source
During the Second World War, the Red Army learned a valuable lesson from the Germans about individually portable anti-tank firepower. Both the Panzerfaust and the Panzerschreck had demonstrated themselves to be formidable battle implements and the Russians sought to develop something similar.
By late 1944, they had a design that combined the lightweight portability of the Panzerfaust and the reloadability of the Panzerschreck with a shaped charge warhead that ultimately received the designation PG-1. After the end of the Great Patriotic War, development of the weapon — now designated RPG-1 (for Ручной противотанковый гранатомёт, Ruchnoy Protivotankovy Granatomyot or “hand-held antitank grenade launcher”) — continued because of difficulties with the launcher’s ignition system and the projectile’s disappointing armor penetration.
By 1947, though, an improved design was taking shape that overcame the RPG-1’s shortcomings. It was designated RPG-2 in 1949 and it used a 40mm diameter cartridge to accelerate an 82mm diameter high-explosive/anti-tank (HEAT) warhead out to a maximum range of 150m/500 feet.
While that provided a noteworthy improvement in the weapon’s external ballistics, the big news was that the PG-2 grenade was capable of penetrating armor with a thickness of up to 7”. This made the RPG-2 such a success that it went on to serve not only the armed forces of the USSR, but also other communist bloc nations like the People’s Republic of China and notably the People’s Republic of Vietnam.
Moving Forward
Soon after the RPG-2 went into serial production in the mid-1950s, Russian ordnance engineers began refining the design. They rightfully recognized that the system needed greater stand-off reach so that opposing armored forces could be engaged at greater ranges. They also realized that the system needed to produce increased projectile velocity because that would reduce the target’s window of opportunity for performing evasive maneuvers. But since the RPG-2 was really just a grenade projector, it was not going to be possible to extract more range or velocity from the system without either increasing the power of the propelling charge or lightening the weight of the projectile.
Toward that end, in 1958 the Russians began working on an improved system that incorporated rocket assist. Inspired by what the Germans had done with the Panzerschreck and what the Americans had done with the Bazooka, the Russians equipped a new 83mm diameter grenade with a rocket motor that increased effective range without having to change the projectile size and, therefore, armor-penetrating capacity.
In addition to the improved rocket-assisted grenade, they also improved the design of the launcher’s tube by widening it to 45mm diameter and incorporating an expansion chamber, as well as a venturi and a divergent nozzle at its rear end. While these changes brought the weight of the launcher up to 10 lbs., the new features nevertheless provided the desired increase in velocity — an increase that doubled the weapon’s effective range to an impressive 1,000 feet. It received the designation RPG-4 and it passed field trials with flying colors in 1961, but it was not issued to the Soviet military in significant numbers because yet another variant with even better performance was about to be adopted.
Refining the Tools
For all of the RPG-4’s impressive capabilities, it was here one day/gone the next, and it functioned more as a proof of concept than anything. There was room for improvement in the design of the launcher’s expansion chamber, the venturi, and the nozzle, and the grenade’s anatomy also had to evolve because the engineers went back to a 40mm diameter launch tube. All of this design evolution eventually culminated in a weapon that rivals even the legendary Kalashnikov in terms of notoriety and mystique.
It received the designation RPG-7 and, since it entered Soviet military service 60 years ago, it has become a legendary and infamous source of battlefield firepower. It weighs 14 lbs., it is 37.5” long, and the area of its expansion chamber is covered by either wood or plastic insulation to protect the shooter from heat. The RPG-7 is equipped with flip-up sights, and the adjustable rear sight is graduated from 200m to 500m, but the weapon also has an accessory rail on the left side for mounting the PGO-7 scope. This 2.8x windage adjustable optic features a battery-operated illuminating ranging reticle that provides holdovers for calculating lead and bullet drop.
While the internal design of the launch tube of the RPG-7 is the product of some actual engineering sophistication, the weapon’s ignition system could not be simpler: a hammer strikes a firing pin that strikes a primer that ignites the gunpowder booster charge that propels the grenade out of the tube at 400 feet per second. After about 30 feet, the grenade’s rocket motor kicks-in and sustains flight with a velocity of 1,000 feet per second out to a maximum range of about 3,000 feet. The preliminary gunpowder booster stage is used because without it, the operator would receive the full backblast of the rocket motor.
While several different grenade types have been introduced for use with the RPG-7 system during its six decades of service, the PG-7 high-explosive/anti-tank (HEAT) round is the most common. It is an 85mm diameter shaped-charge warhead weighing 5 lbs. that deploys four stabilizing fins in flight. The PG-7 remains inert and perfectly safe until it is subjected to the rapid acceleration of launch during which the warhead goes from 0 to 500 fps in the blink of an eye. Only those G-forces can initiate the sequence that ignites the sustainer motor and arms the shaped charge’s fuze.
As an additional safety precaution, the PG-7 is also equipped with a self-destruct timer that will detonate the warhead after it has flown about 3,000 feet. Today, a variety of rounds are available for the modernized RPG-7 that provide greater performance than what was available back in the 1960s, and that includes a high-explosive/fragmentation round, a tandem high-explosive/anti-tank round for defeating modern reactive armor, and even a thermobaric anti-personnel round that produces a high volume, high pressure, high-temperature explosion that can be effective against opposing troops inside of structures.
In Use
The RPG-7 has been produced by nine countries and it has been used by more than 40. Since 1961, over nine million examples have been manufactured, making it the most ubiquitous anti-armor weapon there has ever been. From the Golan Heights to Huế’s Imperial Palace, from Mogadishu’s Bakaara Market to the streets of Marawi and Kyiv, the RPG-7 is one of the most successful weapons in the history of human conflict — right up there with the longbow and the trebuchet.
It has materially altered the landscape of contemporary ground combat and it does not seem to be anywhere close to the end of its service life. In fact, it is fighting right now as this article is being written. Although it may have been born of a need to knock-out NATO armor in a great Wagnerian Götterdämmerung in West Germany’s Fulda Gap during the Cold War, it is at this very moment being used by the Ukrainians to destroy vehicles belonging to the armed forces of the country that first created it.
In what is perhaps the greatest irony of them all though, some of the examples of the RPG-7 fighting in Ukraine right now were made in the USA. In 2017, the Ukrainian military began purchasing examples of an RPG-7 clone from AirTronic USA of Spring Branch, Texas. It is designated PSRL-1 and, although it makes use of modern materials and features 1913 accessory rails, it is nevertheless capable of firing any of the PG-7 type grenades that might be encountered worldwide.
Thus, the RPG-7 lives on, albeit now with an American accent.
Woo boy trends come and go in the gun industry, and one currently ‘in’ is the subgun. A subgun is a really big pistol that resembles an SMG of sorts. Guns like the MPX, the Scorpion, and various MP5s, AR 15s, etc. Well, one of the newest subguns is the Ruger PC Charger. It’s the subgun derivative of the newly famous Ruger PC Carbine. Charger in Ruger language is a pistol variant of a rifle. The Ruger PC Charger keeps all of the best parts of the PC Carbine, but it just shrinks it a bit.
Ruger PC Charger – Specs and Features
How much did they shrink the Ruger PC Carbine? Well, the barrel went from 16.12 inches to 6.5 inches. Obviously, the gun gets a lot lighter as well, with the weight dropping to a pleasant 5.2 pounds. The overall length of the gun is only 16.5 inches.
There are lots of different stock setups and chassis systems for the Ruger PC Carbine, but the Charger only comes in a glass-filled polymer chassis that’s a bit more ‘tactical’ than the average Carbine stock. The charger sports a small M-LOK handguard which is made from metal with just a few slots. It’s enough to mount a light or whatever other small accessory you’d like.
The PC Charger comes without optics or sights but is optic’s ready. A long-scope rail covers the top of the receiver. It’s obviously a natural host for a red dot. Speaking of being a host, the barrel has a 1/2×28 threading that makes it easy to attach a suppressor or muzzle device.
Ruger made a wise move with the PC Charger and Carbine series. Their previous PCC utilized Ruger magazines, and that was it. The Carbine and Charger utilize the Security 9 pattern magazine but also come with a replaceable mag well. This magwell allows you to use the affordable and available Glock 9mm magazines. This opens you up to extended magazines, aftermarket mags, and more.
It was a wise move that was also probably a well-planned financial move. I wouldn’t have purchased the PC Charger if I was stuck with using Ruger’s 17 round 9mm magazines. Give me a 33 round Glock magazine any day.
Take It Down
The Ruger PC Charger is already a small and handy little gun, but it breaks down to an even smaller platform. The barrel pops off in seconds, giving you a take-down subgun. It makes the package smaller, and if you equip the PC Charger with a suppressor, then it becomes super handy. You can make the PC Charger portable without having to remove your suppressor.
Taking it down requires you to lock the bolt to the rear, pull and tab, twist, and remove. That’s all there is to it. This makes it really easy to carry the Charger in a small, discreet bag or easy to lock into a small safe.
Ergonomics of the PC Charger
This cute little fella is a sweet little gun with awesome ergonomics. The rear grip is AR-style and can be replaced with whatever AR grip you choose. The front of the weapon has a handstop that’s a welcome safety feature. It’s light and handy, and even without a brace, it’s easy to fire.
Adding a brace isn’t an issue and can be done quite quickly. The rear of the gun has a 1913 mount that makes attachment easy. I used the SB1913, but numerous braces exist that comply with the 1913 rail. The triangle folder from SB tactical might be my next option.
The magazine release and charging handle can swap sides. I moved the charging handle to the left side since I’m a right-hander but left the mag release as is. The magazine release is massive and easy to use. The charging handle is also fairly large and easy to engage. The safety is a simple cross bolt, no different than the safety on the 10/22.
To The Range
I topped the optic with a Holosun AEMS, filled up a few 33 round ETS magazines, and hit the range with a purpose. I set up some man-sized targets and intended to spend my day shooting a few different drills. After a quick zero, I started at 25 yards and fired some of my favorite Marine Corps drills.
This includes snap headshots, failure to stop drills, box drills, and a multitude of position changes on the fly. The little gun barked and grunted on command without dispute. Steering it from target to target was a nonissue. You expect stiff recoil from a blowback gun, not a ton, but more than a 9mm should deliver.
Ruger uses a dead blow-action that uses a tungsten weight to restrict the travel of the bolt and soften recoil while retaining reliability. This uses a tungsten weight that moves both rearward and forward slightly to deaden the blow. I can say it works rather well, and the felt recoil is very mild.
Muzzle rise is predictably minimal in a gun this big and heavy. It’s small for a gun in general but quite large for a pistol. A muzzle device might tame it a little more should you really wanna go fast.
Stepping Back
The trigger is AR-like, and that’s a good thing. It’s a crisp pull and a short amount of take-up before you get that nice solid ‘bang.’ It’s handy and helps the gun with accuracy. Speaking off, I set up a nice steel IPSC target and walked the gun back to 50 and even 75 yards and got consistent rings on steel.
The AEMS’ reticle made it easy to compensate for drop and allowed me to figure it out quickly. My IPSC target has a 6-inch plate in the center that’s separate from the main target. I was even able to keep that thing ringing thanks to the AEMS and Ruger’s accuracy.
I wanted to see if taking down the barrel and replacing it over and over would create accuracy issues. I removed the barrel, fired a group, and repeated for five total groups each of three rounds. If accuracy is impeded, I couldn’t tell. Maybe if this was a precision weapon at 500 yards, but for a subgun at 25 yards, it isn’t an issue.
On top of being accurate, reloading is also fast. The magwell is huge and easy to shove a mag into on the fly. The LRBHO helps a fair bit, as does the massive charging handle. It all comes together to make reloading easy and intuitive.
Charge It
The Ruger PC Charger has proven to be a reliable, accurate, ergonomic, and just plain fun gun. The little guy was a bit of a surprise when it premiered, but I appreciate surprises. The PC Charger has become one of my favorite subguns. Now I need the ATF to approve my can so I can have a suppressed tiny take-down gun.