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The Ukrainian sniper believed to have killed a Russian officer from a record 2.4 miles away is a 58-year-old ex-businessman — who had already begun packing up his rifle by the time his bullet hit its target.

Vyacheslav Kovalskiy’s 12,468-foot shot Nov. 18 traveled further than the length of two Brooklyn Bridges in about 9 seconds to kill the enemy solider, according to footage of the incident reviewed by The Wall Street Journal on Monday.

“I was thinking that Russians would now know that is what Ukrainians are capable of,” the previously unidentified sniper told the outlet in his first media interview.

“Let them sit at home and be afraid.”

Kovalskiy and his “spotter” — who are both members of the military counterintelligence division of the Security Service of Ukraine — initially observed Russian soldiers cutting wood but considered them too low-ranking to shoot, according to the outlet.

Then a group of other soldiers appeared, and the Ukrainians noticed one of them was an officer giving orders.

Kovalskiy had been laying still for hours in almost freezing temperatures when he received the order to shoot at his target nearly 2½ miles away.

“You can,” his spotter instructed him.

The sniper was given the go-ahead after his colleague used a laser to measure the distance and specialist software and meteorological data to calculate the effects of the wind, humidity, temperature and even the curvature of the Earth.

The wind was projected to alter the trajectory of the bullet by about 200 feet.

After a test shot 1,000 feet to the side of the target revealed that they had gotten the wind speed wrong, Kovalskiy reset, reloaded and fired his bullet — half a foot long at 6.2 inches — at a speed of 960 mph.

“You have to [shoot] immediately because the wind changes constantly,” Kovalskiy explained to the outlet.  

This time his aim was on target, breaking the old record for a kill shot by more than 850 feet, Ukraine said.

But before it was even confirmed in the field that he had hit his target, Kovalskiy said, he was already packing up his rifle, a Ukraine-made Volodar Obriyu, which translates to “Horizon’s Lord.”

Neither Ukraine nor Kovalskiy revealed the geographic location of the shot heard ’round the world.

While it was fêted as a much-needed morale boost to Ukraine as their counteroffensive stalled, some in the sharpshooting community are still skeptical of the alleged feat.

Some snipers and ballistics experts interviewed by The Journal said the shot was possible but very hard to execute.

“For conventional sniping, there are so many variables that are hard to quantify, so the reality is anything over about 1,300 meters [about 4,265 feet] can be more luck than skill,” said Steve Walsh, a former US Marines sniper instructor.

US ballistics expert Brad Millard told the paper that the 9-second timing of the shot’s trajectory in the video was accurate.

But Millard said he doubts that Ukraine knows for sure that the officer was slain, a point that Kovalskiy refutes, citing the size and speed of his bullet.

“There is no chance he survived,” Kovalskiy said of the shot, which appeared to strike the man right in his torso, according to footage.

The sniper, who has won long-distance shooting competitions in Europe and North America, questioned why some in the international community were skeptical of his deadly shot when stationary targets had been hit at similar lengths at the NRA’s King of Two Miles contest in New Mexico.

Kovalskiy signed up as a sniper on the first day of Russia’s invasion last year and reportedly has no qualms about killing the Kremlin’s fighters.

“It doesn’t worry me a gram,” the man said.

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