News Feed
 (Updated:  )

U.S. Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected the new pope and leader of the Roman Catholic Church on Thursday, taking the name Pope Leo XIV, a senior cardinal announced on May 8 to crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square, according to Vatican News.

Video

The Kyiv Independent’s Chris York sat down with author, historian, and Russia’s Victory Day celebrations on May 9, which mark the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II, are one of the country’s biggest public events of the year. President of the Ukrainian Society of Switzerland Andrej Lushnycky who sheds some light on the things Putin would rather you didn’t know about World War II.

Show More
News Feed

Ukraine downs Russian guided bomb near Zaporizhzhia, Air Force says

2 min read
Ukraine downs Russian guided bomb near Zaporizhzhia, Air Force says
Damaged cars near a city's infrastructure facility building damaged by a Russian guided aerial bomb strike in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on Jan. 8, 2025. (Elena Tita/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

Ukrainian forces shot down a Russian guided aerial bomb near the front-line southern city of Zaporizhzhia on Feb. 7, Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat told Interfax-Ukraine.

Guided aerial bombs (KABs), while having a shorter range than missiles, are cheaper to produce and are launched from aircraft within Russian territory or Russian-occupied territories, beyond the reach of Ukrainian air defense.

They are nearly impossible to shoot down because they have heavy iron structures, and come in extremely fast from high altitudes, unlike cruise missiles or drones, according to experts.

According to Ihnat, it was not the first time Ukraine downed a guided bomb.

"To counter this threat, we need a comprehensive approach — both the use of ground-based air defense and aviation components to drive the carriers of these KABs as far as possible," the spokesperson said, without specifying how the target was shot down.

His remarks came after Telegram channels reported that Ukrainian soldiers had down the guided aerial bomb on the morning of Feb. 7, allegedly using experimental weaponry.

Russia regularly attacks Ukrainian front-line settlements with guided bombs. Over the past week, a total of 760 such bombs were launched at Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

According to the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, Russian glide bombs killed 360 Ukrainian civilians in 2024, and injured 1,861, a threefold increase in fatalities, and a sixfold increase in injuries compared to 2023.

Russia’s primitive glide bombs are still outmatching Ukraine’s air defenses, killing more civilians
When a glide bomb exploded at an industrial facility in Zaporizhzhia on Jan. 8, the 13 dead, and 122 injured marked the highest number of civilian casualties in a Russian attack on Ukraine in almost two years. Despite being one of the most primitive and numerous weapons in the Russian

Avatar
Kateryna Denisova

News Editor

Kateryna Denisova works as a News Editor at the Kyiv Independent. She previously worked as a news editor at the NV media outlet for four years, covering mainly Ukrainian and international politics. Kateryna holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv. She also was a fellow at journalism schools in the Czech Republic and Germany.

Read more