Why Ukraine’s army still uses a 100-year-old machinegun

UKRAINIAN FORCES are fighting off Russian invaders with types of machineguns which entered service when Ukraine was part of a Russian Empire ruled by a tsar. The Maxim M1910 has a steampunk aesthetic: it weighs 68kg and has an armoured gun shield on a distinctive two-wheeled mount allowing it to be towed behind a vehicle or manoeuvred by the gun crew. Russian media mock these antiques and say the Ukrainians use them because they lack modern weapons. The truth is more complex.

As the name suggests, the weapon was introduced in 1910. It is a Russian-made version of the first truly automatic machinegun, which was patented by Hiram Maxim, an American-British inventor, in 1883. Earlier Gatling guns had six barrels which needed to be cranked by hand. In Maxim’s design, the recoil from firing a bullet works the action and loads the next round. One finger on the trigger unleashes a succession of bullets. A water-cooled barrel allows it to keep firing for extended periods. Variants of Maxim’s gun proved a lethally effective tool of slaughter and terror during the late-19th-century heyday of imperialism, allowing small European forces to kill those they were dispossessing by the hundred or thousand. It went on to revolutionise war between European states themselves.