Press
Vladimir Putin is attacking Ukraine with insidious glide bombs. But the heavy projectiles sometimes hit Russia itself. There are new figures on this.
Belgorod – They are causing a lot of destruction in the Ukraine war: glide bombs from Russia. With these heavy bombs weighing between 500 and 3000 kilograms, the Russian armed forces are insidiously targeting the city of Kharkiv, which has a population of one million.
Ukraine war: Russian glide bombs fall over own territory
But the gliding unguided bombs, which for example have no infrared seeker and no GPS, do not only land in Ukraine. Washington Post (WP) has now published a map that is intended to document where and how often the powerful glide bombs, which were actually intended for targets on the Ukrainian mainland, have hit the Russian border region of Belgorod.
The WP refers to unspecified internal Russian documents. According to them, at least 38 FAB-250, FAB-500, FAB-1500 or KAB-500 glide bombs were dropped in the Belgorod Oblast. However, only four of the bombs detonated. All of them were in and around the city of Belgorod (about 350,000 inhabitants).
Losses in Russia: Glide bomb probably killed several civilians in Belgorod
The WP furthermore, on photos and videos on social media and comparisons with maps. Most of the unforeseen bombs fell in the area of the small town of Graivoron, directly on the border with the Ukrainian region of Kharkiv. Several free-falling glide bombs dropped by the Russians also fell near the small towns of Rakitnoye and Valuiki, also located in the Belgorod Oblast, endangering the lives of their compatriots.
According to the report, most of the unexploded bombs were found by Russian civilians: by foresters, farmers or simply neighbors of the places where the massive weapons fell. It is unthinkable if all of these glide bombs had exploded. Devastating: According to the opposition media, when a suspected Russian free-fall bomb hit Belgorod recently, Astra seven civilians were killed. Moscow denied at the time that it was its own bomb and blamed Kiev for the debacle.
Air strikes on Ukraine: Putin’s pilots drop bombs over Russia
The fact that the Russian glide bombs land in such large numbers in Russia rather than in Ukraine is due to the fact that Kremlin autocrat Vladimir Putin’s fighter pilots often release the bombs over their own territory, an estimated 60 to 70 kilometers from the border, in order to avoid getting into the radius of the Ukrainian air defenses that they received from the West – primarily the precise Patriot air defense systems. The Patriots have a range of up to 160 kilometers to detect possible military targets in the air.
Recently, several NATO members have gradually declared that the Ukrainian armed forces can also use the missiles they have delivered against Russian offensive weapons on Russian territory. For example, against fighter jets that are using glide bombs to target Kharkiv, the second largest Ukrainian city in terms of population (1.5 million). This gives the impression that Russian pilots are releasing their bombs much deeper within the Russian Federation. Ruslan Leviev, analyst at the think tank Conflict Intelligence Teamexplained Astra Furthermore, the often civilian electronics used in the bombs are “significantly less reliable” than conventional military technology.
Russia’s weapons in the Ukraine war: Putin orders attacks with three-ton bombs
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently accused Putin’s circle of having Russian fighter planes firing thousands of glide bombs onto Ukrainian territory in recent weeks. According to videos on X (formerly Twitter), the three-ton FAB-3000 (see tweet above) with corresponding destructive power, which were once developed in the Soviet Union as unguided free-fall bombs, have recently been increasingly used. In keeping with this, in March the Kremlin released footage showing the then Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu inspecting an arms factory.
A number of bomb casings with a large diameter, several meters long, were seen, which military bloggers on social networks attributed to Russian FAB-3000 bombs due to their size. According to the Spanish news portal infobae allegedly weigh 1400 kilograms – with a potential radius of destruction of 46 meters. If a FAB with a delay fuse is dropped from a great height, it can penetrate several meters into the ground. Accordingly, there are likely to be great concerns in Russian border regions that the bombs will fall on their own territory again. (pm)
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