Russia uses "glide bombs" to bombard border communities in Ukraine.
This year, Moscow has increased the pace at which it is destroying frontline cities to a degree never witnessed during the war.
Kharkiv: Aisles filled to nearly the brim with home renovation supplies were destroyed by the initial shock wave. A few seconds later, another Russian bomb descended like a comet, unleashing flames that reduced the megastore to a pale shell. In Kharkiv, a third bomb fell behind the Epicenter shopping complex, but it did not explode.
The goal is to assist investigators in tracking down the supplier of the most recent Russian "glide bombs," which are destroying eastern Ukraine through retrofitting.
The bombs from the Soviet era have been cheaply modified with imported electronics to enable Russian jets to lob them towards Ukraine from a distance.
Avdiivka, Chasiv Yar, and Vovchansk are just a few of the cities that have been completely destroyed by the weaponry. Russia possesses an almost limitless supply of these bombs, which are delivered from airfields immediately across the border that Ukraine has not been able to attack.
The attack on May 25th, according to store manager Oleksandr Lutsenko, suggests what Russia wants from Kharkiv: "They want to turn it into a ghost city, where no one will stay, nothing to defend, and it will be pointless to defend the city." They will not be successful in their attempts to frighten people.
Using glide bombs and a developing network of airstrips, Russia has intensified its destruction of Ukraine's front-line cities in 2024 to a scale never seen before in the war, according to an Associated Press review of drone footage, satellite imagery, Ukrainian records, and Russian photos. The severity of recent Russian attacks is evidence of the outcomes.
Russia spent a year to destroy Bakhmut, the site of the weapons' initial detonation. Months of devastation ensued in Avdiivka after that.
Then, AP-analyzed photos showing the smoldering wreckage of both cities in Vovchansk and Chasiv Yar revealed that it would only take weeks to do the same task in those cities.
Russia is now working up another airfield that is less than 100 kilometers away.
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