By Galina Korol | 2024-07-15

KYIV -- Russian warplanes are accidentally bombing their own people as they target Ukraine, according to an internal Russian document intercepted by Ukrainian intelligence and passed to The Washington Post.

"The powerful glide-bombs that Russia has used to such great effect to pound Ukrainian cities into rubble have also been falling on its own territory," the newspaper reported July 1.

Between April 2023 and April 2024 at least 38 glide-bombs fell from Russian aircraft onto Belgorod province, which borders Ukraine, the document said, noting that most did not detonate.

The outlet reported that "at least four bombs fell on the city of Belgorod itself, a regional hub with a population of about 400,000 people."

Another seven bombs were found by civilians in nearby suburbs. The most bombs -- 11 -- fell in the "Graivoron border region where some could not be recovered because of the 'difficult operational situation,'" The Post reported.

According to the news outlet, one of the first recorded incidents was in April 2023, when a bomb fell on Belgorod, slamming onto a thoroughfare and leaving a 19.8-meter-wide crater.

This happened at night, damaging parked cars and building facades. No casualties were reported. A day later, locals found a second "dud" that had become lodged seven meters into the ground.

Generally local authorities stay quiet about the incidents, report "accidents" or blame Ukrainian shelling, The Post reported.

"Russian military acknowledged at the time that the 'accidental release of aircraft munition' from a Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber was behind the explosion," the newspaper said.

The document confirmed it was a FAB-500 bomb carrying a 500kg payload.

'Abnormal discharges of ammunition'

Russian soldiers began using FABs, general-purpose air-dropped bombs, against Ukraine in early 2023, observers told Kontur.

The more of them they deliver to Ukraine, the more FABs may drop off along the way in Russia, they warned.

"Essentially, the number of these abnormal discharges of ammunition says something about how intense the combat usage is," said Roman Svitan, a reservist colonel in the Ukrainian military, flight instructor and military analyst.

Svitan pointed out several reasons for a bomb to discharge abnormally.

"Reasons range from a technical malfunction of the bomb carriage to an error in the piloting technique of the flight crew, which might be handling the external mounting [of the bomb] incorrectly and incompetently," he explained.

"In any aerial bomb, and especially with the glide bomb system, there is major wind resistance, and any unexpected overload or gliding angle pulls the bomb from its mounting."

The probability of error jumped because the Russians initially loaded their aircraft as much as they could.

If all 12 of the Su-34's hardpoints are loaded, the aircraft is very heavy, Svitan said.

"So naturally the probability of error in the piloting technique increases, so bombs fell [by accident] out of those aircraft," he said.

Another reason why bombs drop out by accident is the unreliability of Russian equipment, Oleksandr Kochetkov of Kyiv, a nuclear missile specialist and former design engineer at the Pivdenne Design Office, said.

"What's happening now in the Russian army is that it's taking naval cannons off ships, welding them to armored personnel carriers and sending that to the front," he told Kontur.

"And these bombs aren't made in a factory. They're retrofitted, half-homemade, and as a result the structure isn't very reliable," he said.

"The systems that launch guided bombs from aircraft are half-improvised themselves and aren't very reliable either. They're ... used very intensively, and they break down."

Cruise missiles over the Caspian Sea

The Russians are losing cruise missiles as well, analysts say, which is forcing Russia to fire missiles toward Ukraine from over the Caspian Sea basin.

"Strangely, Tu-95s are taking off from an area beyond the Arctic Circle ... and flying 2,500km to launch missiles over the Caspian Sea toward Ukraine," said Mykhailo Prytula, a reservist colonel in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and a military counterintelligence specialist.

"Maybe it would really be easier to launch them somewhere near Moscow or over Moscow, but no, they're not doing that," he said.

"They're wasting massive aviation resources, which are not infinite for them, to launch missiles where they can fall safely ... over the Caspian Sea," Prytula said. "They're not launching these missiles over Moscow, in case they fall on Moscow, god forbid."

"For instance, say you have 11 bombers flying, and then eight or nine missiles [total] reach Ukraine," he said.

"You can do the math and figure out around how many missiles fell. If each bomber can hold six, eight or 10 missiles depending on capacity, and then eight [from the whole mission] reach Ukraine, many missiles are indeed falling off."

In this case, the Russians are killing not only people in Ukraine but marine life too, Prytula said.

"The fuel in these missiles is very toxic, so many dolphins in the Caspian Sea are dying," he said.

Aging nuclear weapons

In light of the mishaps with aerial bombs and cruise missiles, the state of Russia's nuclear weapons, which the Kremlin continues to threaten the world with, is raising a host of questions.

After the Soviet Union fell, these weapons were not adequately maintained, observers speculate.

"It's highly probable that the condition of nuclear weapons in Russia, especially tactical ones, does not back up the threats and extortion the Russians are carrying out," said Kochetkov, the nuclear missile specialist from Kyiv. "It doesn't meet even the normal level [of usability]."

The nuclear weapons are simply aging, he said.

In Soviet times, "the Ministry of Medium Machine Building was in charge of producing and maintaining nuclear weapons and everything was done diligently," said Kochetkov.

"There are rather stringent conditions for storing these nuclear weapons, including strict pressure regulations," he said, adding that deviating by more than 3° Celsius from the proper temperature range could cause problems.

"No one can guarantee that these temperature regulations were followed during the wild 1990s, when .... it was a free-for-all," Kochetkov said.

For this reason, the Kremlin might not even know the condition of its most formidable weapons.

"Until [Russian President Vladimir] Putin tests his nuclear weapons -- which would be the logical thing to do, to conduct tests before using something -- we can ignore even this [the prospect of Russia using nuclear weapons in earnest]," said Prytula, the SBU reservist.

However, Putin is in no hurry to carry out tests, Kochetkov said.

"Russia can't conduct tests because it's afraid that it will turn out that the emperor has no clothes and these weapons won't work during the tests, and then the West will stop fearing Russia for good," he said.