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Ukrainian soldiers are now scoring points for confirmed kills, prompting fears of a corresponding war

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Listen | How does the Ukrainian score for Ukraine?

In the meantime15:48Ukraine uses Video Game Point Systems to track murders

The Ukrainian military uses a video-style system that rewards them with points for successful drone strikes, such as 12 points for killing a Russian soldier, 40 for destroying a tank.

“Basically, what Ukraine has used the market … is called Brave1 Marketwhere the units can go online, see what defense technology is available for sale,” said Tim Mak, who is charged with the war based in Kyiv.

“If you get a lot of confirmed kills or capture a lot of enemy soldiers… you can use those [points] It tells you more machines and more drones,” he told In the meantime.

Brave1’s marketplace is described as Amazon The market with the war. It went online in April and expanded in August, with 400 drone units now competing for points, according to Ukrainian officials. Wounding an enemy soldier gets eight points, while killing professional drone technicians is worth 25. The video of each attack is analyzed by Kyiv before the scores are executed by Russian Solding.

“This helps us stop the enemy,” Minister Dikrailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Fraud, told the New York Times last week. “If this gives more motivation to our army, we are happy to support it.”

A screenshot of the list of websites
Screenshot of the Brave1 Online marketplace, showing the machines the Ukrainian military can redeem for points earned from confirmed kills (Padraig Moran/CBC)

Christian EneMark studied the principles of war for twenty years. He said the points system’s similarity to a video game raises some concerns.

“You run the risk of underestimating people’s sense of the immorality of the deadly and destructive actions they take,” said Enemark, a professor of international relations at the University of Southampton in the UK.

Speaking last week, Fedorov dismissed similar concerns about air pollution.

“What madness is starting a total war in the 21st century,” he said.

Not all Ukrainian officials are comfortable with the plan.

“We want our people to come back from war as human beings, not as killing machines,” former Ukrainian prosecutor Gyunduz Mademeveli told Time magazine in September.

“Some of these new systems make it more difficult, because the war can start to feel unreal,” said Mayalometov, who now advises the military on drone warfare principles.

The program meets a military need: a reporter

Mak says he Assume that the program’s criticism is misplaced.

“There might be a moral problem if you were supporting people to kill when there was no alternative. But the people of Ukraine are war; We’re already killing each other,” he said.

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 20222, in a conflict characterized by the use of technology such as drones. International efforts to sell the Peace Deal, including US President Donald Trump, have shown little progress.

A soldier uses a drone, view of the drone's camera feed on a small monitor
The soldiers monitor their stones using cameras mounted on drones (Ge geya savilov / AFP via Getty Images)

Earlier in the war, Russia offered the service of burning money to the military who was able to take Ukrainian tanks supplied by Ukraine. Ukraine’s system is unique in that it allows units to spend their points on military equipment, based on their front line needs.

Mak sees it as a “transparent system of procurement,” allowing local chiefs to meet some of the challenges they face.

“Contrary to the hidden plan where the government says, ‘all units need this number of drones, all units need to be flexible,'” he said.

Enemark said that, from the government’s point of view, the plan is “a really smart, novel approach to the military. But he Compressed It is important not to lose sight of how those points are earned – a system that risks gambling with one’s life.

“Every war is a myth of human failure, and the countries involved try to do the best they can in a bad situation,” he said.

But while he said Ukraine is fighting a war of national self-defense in the face of Russian aggression, “it’s not the beginning and end of the moral issue.”

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Tech must live ethically: Scholar

EneMark said that as the technology of war continues to advance, it should be held against the standards of good behavior, such as discrimination between combatants and civilians.

“It’s not like we have to go back or water it down, lower the expectations of independence – just because some of the technological potential is still there,” he said.

“With each of these new things, we continue to look at whether those programs can adhere to the behavioral expectations that we have.”

Mak said he understands the concern about the gambling war, but much of the criticism of the program comes from people who struggle with the reality of the day-to-day tradition.

“[For] Someone who lives in a war zone or soldiers in actual combat every day, that doesn’t really seem like a fair point,” he said.

“Ukraine is trying to defend itself against the ongoing attacks against the destruction of its country and its sovereignty.”

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