Cities in eastern and southern Ukraine are increasingly being hit by Russian glide bombs, converted gravity bombs that can be guided to targets, often landing without detection, residents and officials say.
By Maria Varenikova
October 28, 2024
The New York Times
There was no warning, no whistling sound of a missile or buzz of a drone that usually heralds a Russian attack. There was just an explosion, a resident said, and then a pile of smoldering rubble where a small shopping center once stood.
Local officials say the device used in that attack on the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia last month was a Russian glide bomb — the first indication, they say, that Russia would begin targeting their city with the powerful weapon.
Since then, local officials say, glide bombs have frequently struck the city, wounding more than 100 people and killing at least two. They are considered especially dangerous because they are hard to intercept. “They suddenly go boom,” said Stanislav, a retiree, describing the attacks. “We are worried.”
Glide bombs have been deployed by Russian forces to pound Ukrainian frontline positions throughout the war, and have been used against cities close to the Russian border, like Kharkiv, in recent months. But major cities farther from the border, like Zaporizhzhia, that were once seen as out of reach of the weapons are increasingly being struck, local officials, residents and military experts say.
It is unclear why Zaporizhzhia — once considered relatively safe — has come under attack by the glide bombs, which are unguided Soviet-era bombs converted into long-range, precision weapons with a “guidance kit” of small wings and fins. The bombs are launched from planes, usually at a safe distance from Ukrainian air defenses, and then glide to their targets.
Many experts say they believe that Russia is now able to hit Zaporizhzhia because it somehow modified the bombs to extend their range.
Whatever the reason for the increasing threat the glide bombs pose to Zaporizhzhia, it is clear that the attacks have shaken the city, which has become a haven for civilians fleeing the fighting to the east.
The city is strategically important for Ukraine’s defense of the south. It is a center for train and highway transportation and has a large steel industry that supports weapons production in Ukraine. And it is symbolically important as the capital of the Zaporizhzhia region, which Russia has sought to annex.
The use of the bombs is especially worrisome because their flight time is so brief that air-raid sirens warning of their approach usually go off only shortly before the bombs hit, if at all. “People in the city tell us that they have started sleeping in their clothes as these air bombs are so quiet, you only hear it once it explodes,” said Natalia Ardalianova, who works with Artak, a charity that helps to evacuate civilians from Zaporizhzhia. “The situation has definitely changed — we sleep less now.”
Kateryna Klymenko, a mother of three who works as a district council lawyer, also complained about not being able to sleep much since the glide bomb attacks began. She said she had joined other city employees at night to aid victims of attacks and was appalled by the scale of the destruction she sees. “That scares me more than sounds of explosions,” she said.
Ms. Ardalianova said her charity was now helping relocate people who lost homes in Zaporizhzhia to relocate within the city. “We see these crying and trembling people who suddenly lost everything,” she said. The first cities to be hit with what local officials said were glide bombs were in northeast Ukraine early this year. Sumy was the first to be struck, in February, then Kharkiv, with bombardments intensifying in May.
Oleh Krulikovsky, the head of an emergency services team in the Zaporizhzhia region, said that more civilians were being injured because the glide bombs, less precise than ballistic missiles, rely on shrapnel to maximize damage over a wider area. “The shrapnel flies up to 250 meters,” he said. “I keep begging people to at least hide behind a wall if they see that they will not make it to the bomb shelter.”
“It is a big danger,” said Marina Miron, a doctoral researcher at the war studies department at King’s College London. “Glide bombs are very destructive tactical and operational weapons.”
Ukrainian soldiers have had long experience facing the consequences of glide bombs hitting their positions. “If it hits your dugout directly, I doubt anyone can survive,” said Roman Kovalenko, a former battalion commander in Ukraine’s 72nd Brigade. He described doors being blown in on bunkers from nearby strikes when he was fighting near Vuhledar, in eastern Ukraine, which Ukrainian forces lost in early October. The Russian military, he said, had used glide bombs regularly in that battle, dropping them in waves.
While Russia has not given details about the glide bombs, Russian military bloggers have boasted about their effectiveness, and a nationalist singer, Acim Apachev, has praised them. “Finally, our dear Soviet bombs have gained accuracy,” he posted on the Telegram platform in May.
For civilians in Zaporizhzhia who fled fierce fighting in the frontline Donbas region, the glide bomb strikes are making them fearful they will be displaced yet again. Longer-term residents who had come to believe they were relatively safe are also increasingly fearful.
In 2022, at the beginning of the war, when Zaporizhzhia was repeatedly hit by missiles, Ms. Klymenko, the district council lawyer, said she fled the city with her children and moved to Lithuania. But she found living in a foreign country hard and came back.
Her husband, who as a man of draft age cannot leave Ukraine, is trying to persuade her to leave again with the children. But Ms. Klymenko said she would leave only if a bomb landed in her yard. “In three years,” she said, “we felt like we would die many times but we survived, and we’ll survive now too.”
Marc Santora contributed reporting from Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, and Nataliia Novosolova from Kyiv.
Maria Varenikova has been covering the Russia-Ukraine war since 2014, working as a producer and reporter for various international media in eastern Ukraine, including Germany’s ARD television station and Vice News. I also worked as a researcher with a nongovernmental group working on community organizing in Sieverodonetsk, Ukraine, which is now under Russian occupation. One of my interests is the ethics of how to cover conflict. I worked as a consultant for a Swedish organization, Sida, helping media executives in Ukraine create standards for reporting. She is proud to have contributed to The Times’s teamwork that won a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 2023. She graduated from the National Technical University in Vinnytsya, in central Ukraine, with a master’s degree in economics and worked as a bank manager before beginning a career in journalism with the start of the war in the east of Ukraine in 2014.