Old Russian bombs bypass modern Ukrainian defenses

Maryna Ivanova, a young woman living in a riverside city in southern Ukraine, experienced an uneasy feeling when her fiancé and brother left for work one morning in early May.

They were heading for a nearby island in the Dnipro River, the waterfront line between the Russian and Ukrainian forces, and the area was under heavy shelling.

While preparing pork and potato soup, Ivanova heard — and heard — a huge explosion, far more terrifying, she says, than the explosions that have become routine.

“It was like something had been thrown at us,” he said.

A few minutes later, he heard yelling outside and ran to the dock.

A ship stopped.

Inside lay his brother, soaked in blood.

Next to her was her boyfriend, with part of his face destroyed.

They were both dead.

He fell to his knees.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” she said.

According to Ukrainian officials who investigated the incident, it was not a mortar, tank or long-range artillery shell.

It was, according to them, a modified 1,100-pound bomb dropped from a distant Russian warplanethe latest destructive twist in a war that is only escalating.

As Kiev prepares for a long-awaited counteroffensive, Ukrainian officials, independent analysts and the US military say the Russians are ramping up their use of Soviet-era bombs.

While they have limitations, these weapons are proving more difficult to shoot down than the faster, more modern missiles the Ukrainians have become adept at intercepting.

Much of this warfare is fought with long-range munitions, from artillery shells to ballistic missiles.

In recent weeks, the Russians have launched wave after wave of explosive missiles and drones into Ukrainian cities, and Ukraine has shot down nearly all of them.

But aerial bombs are different.

They do not have propulsion systems like cruise missiles nor do they stay airborne like drones.

Bombs are in the air only 70 seconds or less and are much more difficult for the Ukrainian air defenses to track.

They’re tiny dots on radar screens that disappear shortly after being launched, Ukrainian officials said, and then crash into cities.

“This is the evolution of aerial warfare,” said Lieutenant Colonel Denys Smazhnyi of the Ukrainian Air Force.

“First they tried cruise missiles and we shot them down. Then they tried drones and we shot them down. They are constantly looking for a solution to attack us and we are looking for a way to intercept them.”

“It’s evolution, countermeasures, evolution, countermeasures“added Colonel Smazhnyi.

“It’s an unstoppable process, unfortunately.”

According to Ukrainian and American officials, the Russians have retrofitted some of the bombs with satellite navigation systems and wings that extend their range, transforming an antiquated weapon, of which Moscow has thousands, into a more modern glide bomb.

The Russians are deploying these glide bombs from Su-34 and Su-35 jets, their flagship warplanes, a US Department of Defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Flying over Russian-controlled territory where Ukrainian air defenses do not reach, warplanes drop bombs, which glide 30 kilometers or more, cross the front line and strike Ukrainian territory.

These bombs are even harder to hit than the Kinzhal hypersonic missiles the Ukrainians say they recently destroyed with the American Patriot air defense systems.

“A Kinzhal has a longer flight time at high altitudes, making it easier to detect and track,” said Ian Williams, deputy director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Glider bombs, on the other hand, were not a weapon the Patriot system was designed for, he said.

Russian military bloggers have been bragging about the prowess of their glide bombs, posting videos and commentary since early January.

A Russian analyst provided insight into Russia’s development in the early 2000s, saying their use was “a step in the right direction.”

There have been some recent mishaps.

In late April, a Russian warplane apparently bound for Ukraine accidentally dropped a bomb on Belgorod, a Russian city near the border.

According to Russian authorities there were no casualties, but days later Russian media reported that two more unexploded aerial bombs had been discovered in the same area.

It’s not clear if it was old or new pumps sliding versions.

Ukrainian officials are using the threat of these bombs to make their case for F-16s, which allies are expected to supply after the Biden administration reverses course and allows training of Ukrainian pilots.

The Ukrainians say they are defeated in the skies and the F-16s could scare the planes Russian war fighters bombing their communities.

“Trying to intercept these bombs is not effective, it’s not even rational,” said Yuriy Ignat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force.

“The only way out of this situation and the only way to stop it is attack aircraft who drop these bombs”.

Both Russia and Ukraine have strong air defenses in the territory they control, making it difficult for either side to carry out combat missions.

The Ukrainian pilots also have a few dozen US-supplied glider bombs but have had problems with them, according to documents allegedly leaked by Jack Teixeira, the Air National Guardsman implicated in a large disclosure of classified material.

The Russians found out. how to interfere with guidance systemsaccording to classified documents, and several Ukrainian bombs missed.

Colonel Smazhnyi and other Ukrainian officers said the Russians were dropping a mix of old, unmodified and modified bombs.

Glide bombs consist of a low-drag FAB-500 M-62 bomb, a standard mass-produced Soviet munition, plus a kit with movable fins and deployable wings,

along with a satellite guidance system that adjusts its course mid-flight. According to military analysts, the modified bombs cost a small fraction of the price of a cruise missile but contain roughly the same amount of explosive.

Ukrainian security services shared photos of Russian bombs that they said had been modified to glide, which US defense officials confirmed.

The location of the photos could not be independently verified.

Few places have been so affected by glide bombs as the surroundings of Cherson, an industrial city on the banks of the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said.

With the Ukrainian counteroffensive looming, Ukrainian troops are invading Kherson and nearby villages such as Veletenske, where Ivanova lived with her boyfriend, Kostiantyn Rumega.

He was 19, she was 20.

He was looking for work, and on the morning of May 2, a man who ran a fishing business summoned him to a nearby river island to clean some nets.

His fiancée told him she didn’t want to go, because she had already gotten into trouble once for not having the necessary fishing permits, and it was too dangerous:

the Russians lit up that whole area with an arsenal of weapons.

But he needed money, Ivanova said, and stood at the door before leaving.

“In that moment, when he kissed me goodbye, there was a lot of love,” she said. “I had never tried it, I felt different.”

It was like he knew.

A few hours later, the explosion along the river flung their doors open and shook their home. It was over a kilometer away. Another civilian was killed along with her brother and boyfriend, a woman who lived by the river.

Since then, Ivanova has been mired in a haze of grief, disbelief, anger and depression.

“I don’t want to do anything,” she says.

And he keeps hearing explosions, shaking inside him a pain he says he will always carry with him.

Alexei Sandakov contributed reporting from Veletsenke, Ukraine; Katya Lachina from Kiev and Thomas Gibbons-Neff from London.

Jeffrey Gettleman is an international correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner. He is the author of the memoirs “Love, Africa”. @gettleman – Facebook Eric Schmitt is a writer who has traveled the world covering terrorism and national security. He was also a Pentagon correspondent. A Times staffer since 1983, he has shared four Pulitzer Prizes. @EricSchmittNYT