Ukraine says the only way to stop Russia’s glide bomb threat is with US-supplied F-16 fighter jets

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has claimed that Russia has fired more than 800 glide bombs at Ukraine in just the last week, as Moscow continues to use the modified Soviet-era explosives to kill both soldiers and civilians.

The bombs, which have been retrofitted with precision guidance systems and can be launched from aircraft flying out of range of Ukrainian air defences, have proved pivotal to Moscow regaining the initiative on the frontline in recent months.

The bombs can weigh more than a ton and are capable of reducing entire multi-storey buildings to rubble.

Residents of Kharkiv, one of the most frequently targeted civilian-populated areas in Ukraine, described the bombs as a type of psychological torture, as even bomb shelters fail to protect against explosives that create such deep craters.

“This week alone, Russia has used more than 800 guided aerial bombs against Ukraine,” Mr Zelensky wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“Against our cities and communities, against our people, against everything that makes life normal.

“Ukraine needs the necessary means to destroy the carriers of these bombs, including Russian combat aircraft, wherever they are. This step is essential.

“Clear decisions are needed to help protect our people. Long-range strikes and modern air defence are the foundation for stopping the daily Russian terror. I thank all our partners who understand this.”

Ukrainians say the most effective means - and in most circumstances, the only means - of stopping this aerial threat is with US-made F-16 fighter jets. But Kyiv’s partners have only recently overcome their hesitation to send these jets to Ukraine, having previously viewed such weapons as too offensive in nature. The first batch of around 80 pledged are due to arrive later in the year.

But the bomb’s retrofitted navigation means Russian fighter jets can launch the bombs from well out of range of Ukrainian air defences, which are in short supply anyway, and longer-range missiles supplied by Kyiv’s partners cannot engage airborne, mobile targets.

Kyiv maintains that the provision of F-16s will allow them to take on Russian fighter jets while in the air, striking the bomb before it has been released.

Dozens of Ukrainians, including an eight-month-old infant, have become the latest victims injured in Russian aerial strikes over the past 24 hours.

On Sunday, one person was killed and nine others, including the infant, were injured in a strike on a post office in Ukraine’s second largest city of Kharkiv.

The head of Kharkiv’s regional administration, Oleg Synegubov, said the strike had damaged a post office in the city, killing one of the employees.

Over Sunday night and into Monday morning, strikes in the capital of Kyiv and further southeast in Dnipro injured at least 13 people, including two teenagers.

The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, meanwhile, claimed in a statement that a civilian had been killed in shelling of an agricultural facility.

Moscow says Belgorod, which borders Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, has come under regular attack from Kyiv’s forces.

Russia’s defence ministry also claimed that its forces had taken control of two villages in eastern Ukraine.

The ministry said in a statement that the Russian army was now in control of the settlement of Stepova Novoselivka in Kharkiv region, and of Novopokrovske in Donetsk region.

However, Ukrainian war tracker DeepState, known to have close ties to the military, reported that both towns were still under Ukrainian control.