Russia drops record number of glide bombs on Ukraine as casualties pile up

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At the same time, Russia has responded to its poor battlefield performance and domestic energy crises by doubling down on the two weapons Ukraine has not found an adequate defence to – glide bombs and ballistic missiles. Russia unleashed 8,300 glide bombs in July, more than in any other month of the war, said Ukraine’s defence ministry. Ukraine’s kill rate is rising to meet what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy believes will be a call-up of up to half a million Russian reservists in October. Al Jazeera is unable to independently verify either side’s claims of casualties in the war, now raging on in its fifth year. Russian President Vladimir Putin has so far refrained from using regular army conscripts and reservists in what he calls his Special Military Operation in Ukraine, fearing a political backlash. Should Ukraine force him to do so, it could mark a political inflexion point in Putin’s popularity at home. As for Ukraine’s casualties, Zelenskyy recently told Fox News they amounted to 450,000, of whom 50,000 are fatalities. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has recently estimated that “the Russia-Ukraine casualty rate has likely risen to nearly 8:1 in the first half of 2026, up from between 2:1 and 3:1 for much of the war, in large part due to Ukraine’s use of drones”. Drones were responsible for 30,272 of Russia’s casualties in July, said Zelenskyy. Russia’s rising casualty rate is accompanied by a falling rate of performance on the battlefield. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank that assesses territorial control using geolocated open-source material, estimates that Russia occupied a total of 37.85sq km (15sq miles) of Ukraine in July, compared with 455,000sq km (176,000sq miles) in July of 2025. That is demonstrative of Russia’s poor showing this year. The ISW estimates that on balance, Russia has lost 183.5sq km (70sq miles) of Ukrainian territory this year, compared with the 2,198sq km (848sq miles) it seized during the first seven months of 2025. Moscow has succeeded in infiltrating areas of Ukraine – a tactic of sending individual troops to pre-position themselves and await reinforcements, thus placing Ukrainian control of territory in dispute, if not firmly controlling it. Russia infiltrated 121.6sq km (47sq miles) in July, according to the ISW, bringing total infiltrated territory for the year to 379.9sq km (147sq miles). Many of these infiltrations have been reversed by the Ukrainian military, but they may yet prove effective in Kostiantynivka, the southernmost of Ukraine’s fortress cities, where Ukrainian defenders have recently expressed doubt about their ability to hold the city for more than a few more months. Ukraine has also been holding its own in the air. Zelenskyy declared a 40-day air strike campaign a success and renewed it on August 4. The three-tiered campaign aimed to hit military production and oil refining inside Russia, energy and weapons flows in occupied territories close to the front line, and front-line positions. Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said it had struck 14 refineries, dozens of oil depots and loading terminals, 14 aircraft and four airfields over 40 days. Many of those strikes took place in the past week, when Ukraine set fire to a Lukoil refinery in Volgograd, three refineries in the city of Ufa, 1,600km (994 miles) from Ukraine, the Slavneft-Yanos oil refinery in Yaroslavl, the Engels 2 and Saratov airfields, and a factory in Izhevsk manufacturing Shahed drones. Unlike the larger Shahed factory in Alabuga, which relies on Chinese parts, this one uses almost exclusively Russian parts, said military technology expert Serhii Beskrestnov. Ukraine has destroyed about a third of Russia’s actual refining capacity, a recent Financial Times analysis of satellite photographs found. Ukraine has been launching close to 10,000 long-range drones a month to achieve these results. Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 6,225 Ukrainian drones flew towards Moscow in July, representing approximately two-thirds of all Ukrainian long-range strikes on Russian soil. When Ukraine launched its drone campaign at the end of 2023, its goal was to manufacture 11,000 long-range drones in all of 2024. It has since contracted agreements with nine allies to manufacture drones on their soil, sending 50 percent of production to Ukraine, and says 15 more agreements are pending. The results of the 40-day campaign have been most dramatic in occupied Crimea, where Ukraine has struck 201 electricity substations. “The Crimean Peninsula’s power grid faced an unprecedented load and operated in critical mode. Rolling blackouts occurred in all Crimean districts,” said the Kremlin’s ambassador-at-large, Rodion Miroshnik. Things were not much better in the adjacent occupied territories of Kherson and Zaporizhia, where he said “large-scale power outages … were recorded throughout the week in all regions”. Ukraine said it has also sunk or disabled 206 Russian tankers and ferries carting oil and war materiel to Crimea across the Black and Azov seas. The head of its unmanned systems forces said it had run out of targets. The energy crisis has forced the Kremlin to spend billions of roubles subsidising the peninsula, including placing a 100 rouble ($1.20) price cap on petrol in the past week. Meanwhile Ukrainian strikes have continued, levelling a 60,000-tonne petroleum products tank farm in Taman, on the Russian side of the Kerch Strait, used to supply Crimea, and causing a catastrophic fire on July 31. Ukraine followed up by striking aircraft hangars in Yevpatoria, a naval boat yard in Chornomorske and an artillery brigade’s supply base, all in Crimea. Russia’s glide bombs are inertial ordnance fitted with fins giving them extra range and accuracy, so they can be dropped at safe distances of 20 to 30km (12 to19 miles) from the front lines. Some carry three tonnes of explosives. They fly too fast to be intercepted by drones and cannot be disoriented by scrambling. As well as glide bombs, Russia also unleashed its greatest monthly tally of missiles against Ukrainian cities – 376 in July, compared with a previous record of 288 in March. Of these, 120 were ballistic, and their density has depleted Ukraine’s stock of Patriot interceptors – the only missile that has proven effective against them. During the past week, Ukraine stopped only one out of 51 Iskander-M ballistic missiles. The Russian penetration rate translated directly into hits and civilian deaths – at least nine on August 1 and 17 on August 5 in Kyiv alone. Russian production of Iskander-Ms is estimated at 70 a month, but North Korean ballistics may now be coming into play. A missile fired at Radushne, Ukraine last month was of Korean manufacture, claimed Zelenskyy – only the second such missile to be used in the war. Zelenskyy has pleaded for countries to send some of their stockpiles of an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 Patriot interceptors. “The United States knows what we need. Europe knows what we need. Anti-ballistic missiles must protect people – not sit in stockpiles,” he said. Ukraine’s vulnerability is clear from figures shared by its air force. It has intercepted 4,626 missiles of various types since the beginning of the war, but only 437 ballistic missiles. 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