Small Arms of Belarusian Special Forces

[Zarvan]

The Belarusian Historical and Cultural Complex “Stalin Line” has published a video telling about current small arms of Belarusian special forces. None of them is an unknown firearm, yet it is still interesting to see what combination of guns and accessories they use. You can watch the video (in Russian) and as always, we’ll take a brief look at each of the guns.

MTs-116M

MTs-116M is a Russian (well, all these guns are Russian) bolt action rifle. The newer versions of this rifle are chambered in of the following calibers: 7.62x54R, .308 Win, .300 Win Mag and .338 Lapua Magnum.

ORSIS T-5000, which we see in more and more places all over the world. You can read more about this rifle by clicking here.

OSV-96

Next up is a magazine-fed semi-auto anti-materiel rifle chambered in 12.7x108mm (the Russian equivalent of the .50 BMG). Note the huge one-meter barrel (39.4″). But the nice thing about this rifle is that the barrel folds to the side and backward making it comparable in size with the SVD rifle.

OSV-96 with the barrel folded

The silhouette of the folded OSV-96 compared to the SVD. Image by modernfirearms.net

PKM

This on is obviously a PKM machine gun. It is equipped with some sort of a KeyMod handguard and a DNS-1 night vision scope made by a Belarusian company called Belarusian Optical and Mechanical Association (BelOMA).

AS VAL and VSS “Vintorez”

Pretty frequently these two firearms are seen adopted/deployed together. The left one is the AS VAL. It has a folding stock as opposed to the fixed SVD-style one of the VSS Vintorez. Both rifles are chambered in 9x39mm, use the same magazines and are integrally suppressed.

AKS-74

These two are accessorized AKS-74 rifles. The top one has a KeyMod handguard with an attached laser sight. It also has an AR-15 style collapsible stock and a more ergonomic grip. The PO4x24P scope seen on this rifle is made by the same company – BelOMA.

The rifle in the image below is also an AKS-74 with a suppressor, GP-25 under-barrel grenade launcher and a rubber buttpad which usually comes with the launcher. It is equipped with a PUMA-90 thermal vision scope made by another Belarusian company called BSVT.

That’s the short description of the guns of Belarusian special forces.

Which one of them is your favorite?

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/07/14/small-arms-belarusian-special-forces/