Ukrainian drones strike a plant producing Shahed “brains” in Russia’s city of Cheboksary. Loud explosions and a fire erupted in the town, located approximately 940 kilometers from Ukraine’s Kharkiv, overnight on 9 June.

Ukrainian drones targeted the VNIIR-Progress plant, which produced components for Shahed drones, UMPK kits, and other details for Russian precision-guided weapons.

Ukraine’s General Staff has officially confirmed that the Russian defense industry enterprise, JSC VNIIR-Progress, was struck as part of an operation to degrade the enemy’s capacity to manufacture air-attack systems.

“The facility was confirmed hit by at least two unmanned aerial vehicles, followed by a large-scale fire,” the General Staff has reported.

After the strike, powerful explosions were heard in the city, and the plant halted production, UNIAN writes.

“Two unmanned aerial vehicles crashed on the premises of JSC VNIIR, prompting a decision to suspend operations,” says Oleg Nikolaev, head of Russia’s Chuvashia Republic.

Besides Cheboksary, drone strikes also targeted facilities in Nizhny Novgorod, Tambov, and Voronezh regions. Aviation restrictions were imposed in Kazan, Saratov, and other Russian cities.

Every day, 180 Russian glide bombs fall on Ukraine. Now they’re falling from twice as far away.

Russia has quietly deployed a new version of its satellite-guided glide bombs that can strike targets from more than 95 kilometers away—double the range of previous models.

The extended reach means Russian pilots can drop their deadly cargo while staying safely beyond most Ukrainian air defenses, fundamentally shifting the tactical balance along the 1100-kilometer front line.

The more aerodynamic UMPK-PD bomb first appeared under the wing of a Russian Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber this spring.

“The Russian aerospace forces test new glide bombs with unified planning and correction modules with extended range (up to 95 km) in Kharkiv Oblast,” CDS reported. 

According to CDS, the Russians have lobbed UMPK-PDs at Kharkiv Oblast from positions over the village of Tomarovka in Belgorod Oblast, 30 km from Russia’s border with Ukraine, on May 31. “Similar glide bombs were used against defense forces in Sumy Oblast in May 2025,” CDS noted.

It’s unclear what percentage of the daily UMPK strikes involve the longer-range version. According to Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky, Russia has dropped 27,700 aerial bombs on Ukraine just this year. “That’s in less than half a year,” Zelensky said.

Jam-resistant glide bombs

The farther away from the target a warplane can drop its bomb, the fewer enemy air defenses it’s exposed to. Farther is safer. 

And it might help mitigate Ukrainian jamming, too. Ukrainian forces have deployed powerful electronic warfare systems that can broadcast radio noise in the direction of satellite-guided munitions such as the UMPKs.

One new jammer, the Lima, is partly responsible for the recent degradation of Russian glide bombing in Kharkiv Oblast, the team’s founder claimed.

Lima isn’t just a traditional jammer that simply blasts radio noise toward the enemy. “We use digital interference,” the founder explained. It’s “a combination of jamming, spoofing and information cyber attack on the navigation receiver.”

Ukrainian forces first deployed Lima to protect Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia, apparently last year.

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“After the deployment of the E.W. system, the accuracy of the bombings first decreased and then, realizing the ineffectiveness of this method of destruction and the impossibility of achieving the goal, the enemy stopped shelling regional centers altogether,” said an official with Night Watch, the team that developed Lima. 

The jamming caused some Russians to panic. “The golden era of the divine UMPK turned out to be short-lived,” Fighterbomber, the unofficial Telegram channel of the Russian air force, noted in a recent missive. “All high-value targets are guaranteed to be covered by [electronic warfare],” the channel added.

But jamming requires a lot of electrical power—and it requires more electrical power the farther the target, a UMPK or another system, is from the jammer. “Like a long-distance runner, radio signals lose strength the further they travel,” explained Thomas Withington, an analyst with the Royal United Services Institute in London.

A farther-flying UMPK is exposed to less jamming, especially in the early moments of its flight. For at least a portion of its one-way journey toward its target, it might be able to navigate accurately. Even if Ukrainian jamming grows more powerful closer to the target, it might be too late: the bomb might already be on course for an accurate hit.

The good news for Ukrainian developers is there’s a straightforward solution to longer-range UMPKs. That is: jam harder, with more powerful emitters.

Russian forces struck the Ukrainian city of Kupiansk in Kharkiv Oblast with two powerful aerial bombs on the morning of 25 May, killing two civilians and injuring three more, the Kharkiv Oblast Prosecutor’s Office reported.

According to the report, the first strike occurred at approximately 09:26, when a FAB-500 air-dropped bomb hit a one-family home residential area. The explosion killed two women, aged 84 and 57. A 60-year-old man and a 75-year-old woman were injured. A 68-year-old woman suffered an acute stress reaction.

More than 20 homes and outbuildings were either destroyed or damaged in the initial attack.

Russia’s massive missile and drone assault kills at least 12 civilians, injures 52, between two prisoner swaps

Second strike used FAB-1500 bomb with UMPK

The Prosecutor’s Office says roughly 30 minutes after the first explosion, a second airstrike was launched on the same city. Preliminary reports indicate that Russian forces used a FAB-1500 bomb equipped with a Universal Gliding and Correction Module (UMPK), a guidance kit that increases accuracy and allows bombs to be dropped from a distance. 

This second strike damaged at least 15 additional residential buildings. No further casualties were reported in the follow-up attack.

Prosecutors launch war crimes investigations

The Kharkiv Oblast Prosecutor’s Office has initiated pre-trial investigations into suspected war crimes under Article 438 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code. Prosecutors, in coordination with police investigators, are conducting procedural actions to document and investigate the strikes carried out by Russian military personnel.