# REPORT: Zaporizhzhia Under Glide Bombs — 5 Dead, 9 KABs in One Afternoon

> On June 20, 2026, at 5:33 PM, the Governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, Ivan Fedorov, posted a photo on Telegram. The smoke

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Reportage
- Published: 2026-06-22
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/reportage-zaporijjia-sous-les-bombes-planantes-5-morts-9-kab-en-un-apres-midi-2

## Introduction: The Afternoon the Sky Fell on Zaporizhzhia

### 5:33 PM, black smoke rises above the city

On June 20, 2026, at 5:33 PM, the Governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, **Ivan Fedorov**, posted a photo on Telegram. The smoke is thick, black, rising in columns over the city. His caption is short, almost clinical: **'The smoke seen by the residents of Zaporizhzhia is the result of an enemy attack.'** Within minutes, confirmations multiplied. **Nine guided aerial bombs** — KABs, for **Korrektiruemaya Aviatsionnaya Bomba**, or corrected air bomb — had just slammed into the Ukrainian regional center.

In the first minutes, the figures remained provisional: **two dead, five wounded**. But in these situations, the numbers only go up. At 6:16 PM, Fedorov confirmed **four dead and six wounded**. Rescue teams continued to sift through the debris. Under the ruins of a private house, someone was still there. A woman. Her body would be extracted later, bringing the final toll to **five dead and ten wounded**. A city in mourning. Again.

### Zaporizhzhia, martyr city of Russian impunity

**Zaporizhzhia** was a city of some **710,000 residents** before the full-scale invasion of 2022. It sits **40 to 50 kilometers from the front line** — far enough for its inhabitants to maintain an illusion of normalcy, close enough for Russian aircraft to strike without ever having to leave Russian airspace or occupied territories. This is the city's geographic tragedy: too far to be on the front line, too close to be safe. And **more than 70% of the Zaporizhzhia region is under Russian occupation**, meaning the Kremlin's bombers operate from territory they already control, just dozens of miles from the residential buildings they target.

On this June 20, 2026, Zaporizhzhia was not the only target. In his evening address, President **Volodymyr Zelensky** noted that the Donetsk, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Dnipropetrovsk regions were also hit. **More than 200 Shahed drones** were launched during the day. And Russia, according to Zelensky, is preparing a new massive strike. **'Tonight and in the coming hours, we must pay very close attention to air raid alerts,'** he warned. Ukraine holds its breath, once more.

*There is something deeply cynical about the repetition of these tolls. Two dead, then four, then five. We get used to it, and that is exactly what Putin calculates. The erosion of Western attention. But behind every digit, there is a life — a woman pulled from the rubble of her home — and families to whom no accountant of terror will ever answer.*

## The KABs: Poor man's weapons turned mass terror machines

### A Soviet bomb reanimated by GPS technology

The **KAB** is not a sophisticated weapon in the sense of the Western arsenals. Originally, it’s an unguided Soviet aerial bomb — old scrap metal inherited from Cold War warehouses. What transforms it into a modern instrument of terror is the **UMPK module** (**Unifitsirovannyy Modulya Planirovaniya i Korrektsii**), a gliding and correction kit equipped with GPS guidance and deployable wings. With this module, a 500kg bomb or larger can be dropped from a **Su-34 or Su-35** flying at an altitude of 12-15km, **60 to 70 kilometers** from its target. The forged iron mass approaches at a staggering speed, practically impossible for Ukrainian air defense systems to intercept.

According to **Militarnyi**, satellite images taken on June 8, 2026, near Huliaipole in the Zaporizhzhia region, show fields and forest edges riddled with surgical precision despite Ukrainian electronic warfare countermeasures. The explanation is brutal: **Ukraine lacks adapted jamming equipment** for the Russian UMPK navigation systems. In May 2026, Russia used **7,496 KABs** in a single month, an average of **241 bombs per day**, up 8% from the previous month. This isn't a weapon of surgical precision in the strategic sense — it is a weapon of **systematic exhaustion**.

### Why Ukrainian air defense cannot stop them

General Syrsky, Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, acknowledged it in March 2026: Russia was then using between **200 and 300 guided bombs per day**, and no effective interception method had yet been found. The reason is mechanical and physical: these bombs consist of a **heavy forged iron casing**, giving them an extremely fast ballistic trajectory and considerable inertia. Available Ukrainian anti-air missiles — NASAMS, Patriot, or old S-300 systems — are calibrated for conventional aerodynamic targets, not semi-ballistic projectiles falling almost vertically in their terminal phase.

Added to this is a cruel geopolitical reality: Russian planes operate inside Russian territory or occupied zones, **out of reach of Ukrainian fighter jets** and out of reach of the long-range surface-to-air missiles that Ukraine has never been delivered in sufficient quantities. The West has provided valuable systems, but always in quantities calculated not to 'escalate' — while Moscow bombards a city of 710,000 residents with **nine glide bombs in one single afternoon**.

*I often think about this absurd asymmetry: Russian generals drop these bombs from the relative safety of the Russian sky, while Ukrainian civilians die in their living rooms. And we, in the West, debate 'red lines' and the 'risk of escalation.' At some point, the escalation is what happens in Zaporizhzhia every week. Not what Ukraine might do to defend itself.*

## Fedorov on the front line: The governor under the bombs

### A man on the ground documenting the horror in real time

**Ivan Fedorov**, military governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, has become one of the most visible figures of the war by necessity. Every strike, every explosion, he relays on Telegram with photos, numbers, and statements. On this June 20, 2026, it is he who gives the alert at 5:33 PM, he who communicates the toll at 6:16 PM, he who confirms the death of the fifth victim, a woman pulled from the rubble of a destroyed house. **'Preliminarily, the Russians carried out nine KAB strikes on the regional center. Unfortunately, four people were killed. Six others were injured. All victims are receiving the necessary medical assistance,'** he wrote on Telegram.

Fedorov doesn't just count the dead. He publishes photos of gutted buildings, smoke columns, blown-out facades. In one message, he warned: **'There is probably a person trapped under the rubble. The number of victims of the enemy attack on Zaporizhzhia is increasing.'** Emergency services continue to receive reports of additional consequences. At the same time, he issues new warnings to the population regarding possible imminent ballistic strikes. A governor administering in a backdrop of total war, in real time, by the light of his phone.

### 887 strikes on the region in a single day

The attack on the city of Zaporizhzhia itself is only part of the picture. On this June 20, 2026, according to Fedorov, Russian forces conducted **887 strikes on 47 localities** in the Zaporizhzhia oblast within 24 hours. This included: **24 airstrikes** on Novomykolaivka, Bilenke, Tavriiske, and other localities; **642 drone attacks** of various types, mainly FPVs, targeting Zaporizhzhia, Stepnohirsk, Huliaipole, and dozens of other villages; **5 multiple launch rocket system attacks**; **216 artillery strikes**. In total, 71 reports of damage to residential buildings, vehicles, and infrastructure.

These numbers are dizzying. **887 strikes in one day.** That’s one strike every 98 seconds, twenty-four hours a day. This isn't a war — it’s a systematic extermination campaign of an entire region, carried out away from the gaze of a world opinion that has grown accustomed to horror as a permanent background noise.

*887 strikes in 24 hours on a single region. I understand that Western newsrooms struggle to cover every strike — but this statistic should be on the front page of every newspaper, every day. This isn't a classic war of position. It is a deliberate attempt to make life impossible in an entire region, to force its population to flee or die.*

## Zelensky face to face with terror: The voice that won't be silenced

### A president who names things

On the evening of June 20, 2026, **Volodymyr Zelensky** delivered his daily address in a particularly heavy context. He noted that Zaporizhzhia had been hit, expressed his condolences to the victims' families, and issued a warning: Russia **is preparing for a new massive strike**. **'Putin must make a choice in favor of diplomacy and a normal peace,'** he said. But in his voice, even those who listen closely no longer hear hope — rather a cold, worn, stubborn determination. Zelensky hasn't left the stage, hasn't fled Kyiv, hasn't surrendered. He is there, every night, naming the dead, describing the bombs, begging the West to understand what is happening.

That night, he also recalled that the Donetsk, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Dnipropetrovsk regions were targeted on the same day, and that a new air raid alert had been issued in Kyiv. **More than 200 Shahed drones** were launched, with a significant number shot down by air defense — but some got through. The map of Ukraine, that night, looked like a target with concentric circles, each circle being a bombarded region. **Russia has not stopped the war**, Zelensky said, despite all the proposals already on the table.

### 'Russia is a terrorist state'

This phrase was uttered by Fedorov, reported by the **Kyiv Independent** in its coverage of the June 20 attack. It isn't new. It has been repeated for months, for years, by Ukrainian officials. But it takes on a particular resonance when it follows a toll of **five dead and ten wounded** in a glide bomb attack on a residential urban center. Because a guided bomb dropped on a city of 710,000 people — 40 kilometers from the front line, on residential houses and apartment buildings — is not an accident of war. It is a **deliberate choice**.

The classification of **terrorist state** is factually precise: deliberately targeting civilian populations to terrorize them and force them to flee or submit is the operational definition of state terrorism. The West still hesitates to formally write it into its legal texts, fearing diplomatic implications. But the civilians of Zaporizhzhia don't need a legal definition to understand what they are living through.

*Zelensky is not perfect. No wartime leader is. But he stays standing, in Kyiv, naming the bombs and the dead, when other heads of state would have long ago given in or fled. I refuse to reduce him to a symbol. He is a man who chose to stay in hell and document it. That deserves, at the very least, for us to listen.*

## The geography of terror: Zaporizhzhia, involuntary frontline city

### A city 40 kilometers from the front, under permanent fire

Zaporizhzhia is both too close and too far. **Too close**: Russian bombers only have to travel a few dozen kilometers from occupied territories to drop their bombs on its streets. **Too far**: its residents maintain the precarious illusion of a somewhat normal life, shops open, children at school, public transport running — until a siren wails and the sky falls. It is this territorial in-between that makes Zaporizhzhia so particularly vulnerable and so particularly tragic.

The **Kyiv Independent** recalls that the city is **a frequent target of Russian attacks**, regularly hit by drones, artillery, missiles, and aerial bombs. Since the start of the full-scale war in 2022, the city has seen repeated attacks, some of particular brutality. In August 2025, two KABs destroyed a crowded bus station and a university clinic, injuring 20 people. In November 2025, the toll of an attack on the city center reached 13 dead and over 100 injured. On May 5, 2026, during a strike that occurred while Moscow claimed to be negotiating a May 9 ceasefire, 12 people were killed and 42 injured. **No military objective had been identified in the impact zones.**

### Over 70% of the region under occupation: The logistics of horror

What the Western public rarely understands is the absurd geographic situation in which Zaporizhzhia finds itself. The controlled Ukrainian city is actually the administrative capital of a region **mostly occupied by Russia**. More than 70% of the Zaporizhzhia oblast has been under Russian control since 2022, including the city of Melitopol and the infamous Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant — the largest in Europe — held as nuclear hostage by the occupying forces. Russian bombers therefore take off from bases located inside this territory they occupy, approach at relatively low altitude, drop their KABs, and return home. Without ever encountering a Ukrainian missile. Without ever risking much.

It is this geographic impunity that makes the situation so revolting. Russia doesn't even need to penetrate Ukrainian airspace to destroy Zaporizhzhia. It does it from 'home' — from the home it stole from Ukraine. This circularity of violence, this logistics of horror organized from illegally occupied territory, should be enough to close the debate on the 'complexity' of the conflict.

*There is something viscerally shocking in this detail: the Russian pilots bombarding Zaporizhzhia might take off from bases located less than 100 kilometers from their targets, in occupied Ukrainian territories. They go home for lunch after killing civilians. This banality of crime, this industrial impunity, is what revolts me most in this entire war.*

## The victims: Names without faces, lives without obituaries

### Five dead, ten wounded — and behind the figures, people

We do not yet know the names of the five people killed on June 20, 2026, in Zaporizhzhia. Ukrainian crisis communication, by necessity, proceeds through numerical tolls, official statements, and photos of destroyed buildings. It takes time to identify victims, notify families, and document exact circumstances. What we know is that the fifth victim was **a woman**, whose body was pulled from the rubble of a destroyed private home. What we also know is that among the ten wounded, some were hospitalized, and the condition of some remained concerning in the first hours following the attack.

The photos published by Fedorov show gutted buildings, blown-out facades, and columns of black smoke. But behind these images, there are people who lived there. People who had schedules, habits, neighbors, and plans. On one afternoon of June 20, 2026, **nine Russian glide bombs** ended five of those lives and damaged ten others. And the same bombs, the same planes, the same pilots will continue tomorrow and the day after, as they have done every week, every month, for over four years.

### A recurrent pattern: Terror as strategy

This isn't the first time. It won't be the last. The June 20, 2026, attack fits into a documented and repeated pattern: since the spring of 2026, Russia has established a **new record for the use of guided bombs**, with 7,987 KABs dropped in March 2026 alone, according to the **Kyiv Independent**. May 2026 set another record with 7,496 bombs used. This is not a tactical coincidence. It is a deliberate strategic decision: **using KABs as a weapon of mass terror**, targeting cities to break the population's morale, forcing internal displacement, and exhausting rescue teams and medical resources.

Russian military doctrine has a name for this: in strategy manuals, it is called a **civilian coercion campaign**. In simple terms: you bomb civilians until their government capitulates or the population rises against it. This is what Putin is doing in Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Sumy, and Mykolaiv. Not because there are military targets. Because terrorizing civilians is, in his logic, a legitimate instrument of war.

*I refuse to use the term 'collateral damage' for bombs dropped on residential homes, a bus station, or a university clinic. These words belong to the vocabulary of concealment. What is happening in Zaporizhzhia is a deliberate terror strategy. And to call it anything else is to be complicit through language.*

## The macabre record: March and May 2026, the months of the bombs

### 7,987 KABs in a single month — the inexorable ramp-up

To understand what happened in Zaporizhzhia on June 20, 2026, one must place this afternoon within a trajectory. In **March 2026**, Russia dropped **7,987 guided bombs** on Ukraine in a single month. This is an absolute record since the start of the full-scale war. In **May 2026**, a new record was set with **7,496 bombs**, an average of **241 KABs per day**. These figures come from satellite monitoring and data collected by the Telegram channel **Oko Gora**, analyzed and published by Militarnyi. They represent a continuous, methodical, industrial ramp-up of Russian aerial terror.

By comparison, in May 2025, Ukraine had recorded a KAB usage already considered alarming. A year later, the intensity increased by dozens of percent. Russia has heavily invested in the production of UMPK modules and in replenishing its stocks of Soviet-era aerial bombs. It possesses a brutal comparative advantage: millions of tons of old unguided bombs stored for forty years in its arsenals, easily convertible into KABs with a UMPK module costing a few thousand dollars apiece. **The economy of terror is frighteningly efficient.**

### NATO observes, Europe dickers, the bombs fall

In June 2026, NATO announced a **€250,000 defense challenge** to find solutions against Russian airfields. Europe is looking to order ten anti-Shahed fighters for Ukraine. Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium could fund a **$250-300 million** order of L-39NG Skyfoxes. Announcements, tenders, discussions. Meanwhile, in Zaporizhzhia on June 20, 2026, **nine bombs fell in one afternoon**. Five people died. Ten were wounded. And the Russian planes have already returned to their bases, intact.

This is not to deny the real efforts of the West. Weapon deliveries, financial support, diplomatic pressure — it all counts. But there is a chasm between the rhythm of Western bureaucracy and the rhythm of Russian bombs. While files circulate between ministries, **Putin bombards at 241 guided bombs per day**. This asymmetry of tempo is perhaps the greatest strategic threat to Ukraine right now — not a lack of will, but a lack of urgency.

*241 guided bombs a day. Every day. I want this phrase printed on the mind of every European parliamentarian voting on defense budgets, every NATO general writing reports on 'potential escalation.' 241 bombs a day. On cities. On civilians. For over a year. Does anyone in the air-conditioned meeting rooms of Brussels, Washington, or Paris really realize what these numbers mean?*

## The Su-34: Executioners of the Ukrainian sky

### A multipurpose bomber turned urban terror tool

The **Sukhoi Su-34** is a twin-engine bomber of Soviet design, entered into service in the 1990s and modernized several times since. In the war in Ukraine, it has become the primary vector for KAB strikes. Its payload capacity — several tons of munitions — combined with its operational range allows it to take off from deep Russian bases and drop guided bombs on Ukrainian targets without ever entering airspace under Ukrainian control. It is escorted by **Su-35s**, air superiority fighters, which protect it from any theoretical interception.

Ukraine has shot down several Su-34s during the conflict, notably thanks to surface-to-air missiles and certain surprise operations. In September 2025, a Su-34 conducting **terrorist strikes on Zaporizhzhia** was shot down by Ukrainian defenders, according to Militarnyi. But these victories remain exceptions in a picture dominated by Russian impunity. Russia produces and repairs these aircraft fast enough to maintain constant pressure. It has also adapted its tactics, flying the Su-34s **as low and as far as possible** from the reach of Ukrainian systems, using the terrain and occupied zones as operational shields.

### The UMPK module: Simple technology for massive destruction

What makes the situation particularly frustrating from the Ukrainian perspective is the **technological simplicity** of the UMPKs. These are not $1 million cruise missiles. They are kits of folding wings and GPS navigation that are bolted onto old Soviet bombs. Their unit cost is estimated at a few thousand dollars. Russia produces thousands per month in its defense factories, operating in a total war regime since 2022. The economy of terror is asymmetric: it costs Ukraine infinitely more to intercept a KAB — when it's even possible — than for Russia to produce one.

This economic asymmetry is one of the strongest arguments for **massive and urgent Western support** for Ukraine: it is far less expensive to destroy Russian Su-34s on their bases — which Ukrainian drone strikes have begun to do — than to attempt to intercept every bomb they drop. The war of drone against drone, base against base, is perhaps the only viable tactical response to the KAB threat. But the West must stop setting 'red lines' on what Ukraine is allowed to strike.

*Wing kits for a few thousand dollars that transform old Soviet bombs into GPS-guided death machines. And we, Westerners, are still fighting over our rules of engagement regarding what Ukraine can hit. There is a moral absurdity in this equation that I cannot stomach. Ukraine defends itself with one hand behind its back, tied by our prudence.*

## The psychological footprint: Living under the permanent threat of KABs

### Terror takes root, a daily life under sirens

For the residents of Zaporizhzhia, this June 20, 2026, was not a surprise. It was a confirmation. A confirmation that death can arrive any afternoon, any morning, any night. Air raid sirens have been part of the city's soundscape for over four years. Smartphone apps pushing real-time alerts, bomb shelters, building basements turned into nightly refuges — all this has become the norm. But this normalcy comes with an immense psychological cost, documented by Ukrainian mental health organizations and international NGOs.

Testimonies gathered by journalists in Zaporizhzhia over the months — and published notably by the **Kyiv Independent** during previous attacks — describe a population that continues to live, out of refusal and necessity, but which carries the constant weight of uncertainty. Children who startle at the slightest noise. Adults who calculate every outing based on the intervals between alerts. Elderly people who refuse to go down to the shelter because they can no longer climb the stairs. **The terror of glide bombs is also this slow destruction of a society's psychological fabric.**

### The trap of media habituation

There is a well-documented phenomenon in media psychology: **habituation to horror**. When a tragedy repeats with metronomic regularity, newsrooms cover it less and less. Editors place it less often in the headlines. The public scrolls past. The June 20, 2026, attack on Zaporizhzhia — five dead, ten wounded, nine bombs in an afternoon — was covered by specialized Ukrainian media and a few large English-language outlets. But in how many major French, German, or Italian dailies did it make the front page? In how many television news programs was it the lead story?

This relative silence is precisely what Putin calculates. He knows that Western democracies have a limited attention span. He knows that if the bombs fall regularly enough and far enough away, public opinion will desensitize. He plays for time, he plays for weariness, he plays for trivialization. And we — media, citizens, governments — prove him right every time we don't talk about it.

*I asked myself this very question while writing this piece: am I writing about a subject that still interests readers? Then I answered 'no' to the question, and I kept writing anyway. Because if the columnists don't talk about it, if the analysts don't talk about it, if everyone gives up in the face of trivialization, then Putin has won without even needing a military victory. Visibility is a form of resistance.*

## May 2026: The ghost ceasefire and real bombs

### Moscow speaks of peace, its planes bombard

To understand the symbolic weight of the June 20, 2026, attack, one must remember the context of May 2026. While Moscow pretended to negotiate a temporary ceasefire around **May 9** — the anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazism, celebrated by Putin as the symbol of Russian 'grandeur' — its planes were bombarding Zaporizhzhia. On May 5, 2026, **12 people were killed and 42 injured** in a KAB strike on the city, according to Euromaidan Press. **No military targets were present in the struck areas**: businesses, houses, a gas station.

Ukraine, despite everything, had declared its own regime of silence starting May 5-6. Moscow had responded with threats of 'retaliatory strikes' if Ukrainian drones appeared over Moscow during the May 9 parade. This sequence reveals a fundamental truth: for Russia, ceasefires are not instruments of peace — they are instruments of propaganda, used to project an image of restraint and goodwill while it continues to kill Ukrainian civilians. It is an industrialized lie, served by steel bombs.

### June 2026: Negotiations on hold, bombs continue

In June 2026, ceasefire proposals were still circulating, pushed notably by American and European mediators. Zelensky, in his June 20 address, reaffirmed that **'all proposals are already on the table'** and that Putin must choose diplomacy. But the reality on the ground is there, biting: while diplomats talk, the Su-34s drop. Nine KABs on Zaporizhzhia this afternoon. Maybe nine others tomorrow on Kharkiv or Sumy. Diplomacy without real military pressure on Russia is, in this context, merely a liturgy — words echoing in the void while bombs echo in the streets.

There is a lesson the West should have learned from four years of war: **Russia only negotiates when it is forced to**. Not when it is offered concessions. Not when military aid is withheld to 'encourage diplomacy.' Not when red lines are set and then immediately erased. It negotiates when the military and economic cost of the war exceeds the benefit calculated by the Kremlin. That moment has not yet arrived. And every day it delays, there are new dead in Zaporizhzhia.

*The May 9 ceasefire was a farce. Everyone knew it before it even started. And yet, Western commentators spoke of a 'positive signal' and a 'window of opportunity.' I can't decide if it's sincere naivety or cowardice dressed as optimism. In either case, it is an insult to the people of Zaporizhzhia who were burying their dead while diplomats congratulated each other.*

## The Ukrainian response: Striking the bases, striking the depots

### Ukrainian drones starting to change the game

Faced with the impunity of Russian KABs, Ukraine has developed an asymmetric response: **striking directly the bases where Su-34s take off**, the UMPK module depots, and the logistical infrastructure fueling the Russian war machine. On June 20, 2026, on the same day as the strike on Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian sources and defense media reported that Ukrainian drones had hit **four gas facilities in occupied Crimea** and a refinery in Tyumen, Siberia — thousands of miles from the front lines. According to defence-ua, Ukrainian drones also struck radar storage sites and logistical targets in Crimea.

These operations, often spectacular, are a direct strategic response to the KAB threat. Destroying UMPK module depots means depriving Su-34s of their ability to transform old bombs into guided weapons. Striking airbases forces the bombers to deploy further back, reducing their payload and lengthening flight times. It is a war of tactical attrition that Ukraine leads with limited resources against an industrially more powerful adversary. Ukrainian strategic creativity in this field is remarkable — and dangerously underfunded.

### The UMPK kit depot hit in Krasnodar: A signal

In April 2024, Ukrainian drones successfully hit a **UMPK kit depot in the Krasnodar Krai**, according to Militarnyi. This type of operation perfectly illustrates Ukrainian strategic logic: working up the supply chain to reach the source of the threat, rather than waiting for the bombs to arrive. Every destroyed UMPK depot means potentially hundreds of guided bombs that will not be dropped. Every Su-34 shot down or damaged on its base is a strike capacity removed from the Russian order of battle.

But to carry out these operations on the necessary scale, Ukraine needs **longer-range drones, in greater numbers, with better payloads**. It needs its Western partners to stop hindering these deep strikes with geographic restrictions linked to the use of provided weapons. Every such restriction is a gift to Putin — a guarantee that his bombing bases, ammunition depots, and war industries remain out of reach. A guarantee that the bombs will keep falling on Zaporizhzhia.

*There is an unstoppable logic in Ukraine's deep-strike strategy. If you can't intercept the bombs in the air, you destroy them before they take off. It's military common sense. And yet, Western governments continue to slam the brakes on these operations for fear of escalation. Escalation against a country that bombards cities with 241 KABs a day. The vocabulary of 'de-escalation' starts to ring hollow against these realities.*

## The West in the mirror of Zaporizhzhia: Aid and hesitation

### What Europe does — and doesn't do yet

Europe has provided Ukraine with billions of euros in military and financial aid since 2022. Patriot systems, NASAMS, Caesar cannons, Leopard tanks, ammunition, armored vehicles. Military training, intelligence, diplomatic and economic pressure via sanctions. All this is real and matters. In June 2026, the discussion centered on the potential order of L-39NG Skyfox anti-drone fighters, and a NATO defense challenge to find solutions against Russian airfields. Progress, certainly.

But there is what Europe does not do yet, or not enough of. It hasn't provided Ukraine with air defense systems in sufficient quantities to cover all major Ukrainian cities. It hasn't lifted all geographic restrictions on the use of its weapons. It hasn't accelerated its own ammunition production at the pace the situation requires. And in some countries — Italy, mentioned on June 20 by defence-ua, refuses to fund the purchase of weapons for Ukraine under the PURL mechanism, preferring to rename its existing defense spending — there are still hesitations stemming from domestic politics rather than strategic logic.

### Trump, constraint and asset for Ukraine

The Trump administration, in its ambiguous relationship with Ukraine, has been both a pressure point and a catalyst. The threat of reducing American aid pushed Europeans toward more cohesion and increased contributions. Trump's sometimes erratic statements forced Zelensky into high-intensity diplomacy, notably during the tense exchanges of early 2025. But fundamentally, the bulk of American aid has continued to flow, shared intelligence has enabled numerous precise Ukrainian strikes, and American pressure on Russia — however imperfect — has kept Moscow diplomatically on the defensive.

Trump is what he is: a pragmatic, unpredictable politician, capable of the best and the worst. But Europe cannot afford to depend on his moods. It must build its own capacity to support Ukraine — financially, industrially, strategically — independently of what happens in Washington. The war in Ukraine is a war for the rules-based international order, for the security of Europe itself. Understanding it this way — and acting accordingly — is the only rational response to the bombs falling on Zaporizhzhia.

*I am not one of those who think Trump is the devil or the savior of Ukraine. He is a variable in a complex equation. What I know is that Europe can no longer afford to be a secondary variable in this war. It is the main stakeholder — geographically, strategically, morally. It is time it acts like it, with or without Washington at its back.*

## The nuclear stake of Zaporizhzhia: A geopolitical time bomb

### The nuclear power plant under occupation: The Sword of Damocles

When we talk about Zaporizhzhia, we cannot ignore the **Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant** (ZNPP), the largest in Europe, held under Russian occupation since March 2022. On June 4, 2026, the IAEA reported an attack on the Zaporizhzhia Thermal Power Plant, adjacent to the ZNPP, raising renewed concerns about the region's nuclear safety. The nuclear plant itself has been disconnected from the Ukrainian grid for months, its reactors kept in a state of cooling under partial international surveillance.

This occupied nuclear plant is a dimension of the war in Zaporizhzhia that we tend to forget when counting the KAB bombs falling on the city. It represents a **nuclear hostage-taking** on the scale of an entire region. If something were to go wrong — an accidental or deliberate strike on the cooling systems, a prolonged power failure — the radioactive consequences would affect not only Ukraine but much of Central and Eastern Europe. It is the silent threat hovering over every negotiation, every proposed ceasefire, every military decision.

### Zaporizhzhia as a symbol of total war

There is perhaps no city more emblematic of the Russo-Ukrainian war than Zaporizhzhia. It concentrates everything: the terror of glide bombs on civilians, the occupation of most of the region, the nuclear plant held hostage, the governor tweeting from the ruins, families burying their dead while diplomats negotiate. **Zaporizhzhia is the face of total war** — a city that survives through stubbornness and the daily resistance of its inhabitants, despite everything Putin does to annihilate it.

On June 20, 2026, five more people joined the long list of civilian victims of this war. Their names are not yet known. Their faces may never be on the screens of international news channels. But they are part of this immense tally that grows heavier every week, every month, for over four years. A tally that international justice must one day present to Vladimir Putin — if the West has the courage to demand it.

*Zaporizhzhia haunts me. Not because I've been there — I haven't. But because every article I read about this city reminds me that modern barbarism doesn't need medievalism to exist. It just needs a Su-34, old Soviet stocks, a GPS module costing a few thousand dollars, and a president who considers Ukrainian civilians legitimate targets. This technological banality of horror is what disturbs me the most.*

## Conclusion: Five dead too many, and tomorrow the bombs will return

### Impunity is Putin's real victory for now

The final toll of the June 20, 2026, attack on Zaporizhzhia is **five dead and eleven wounded** — the figure of ten wounded was revised upward by the latest updates from Ukrinform. Nine KAB guided bombs were dropped on a city of 710,000 residents in the middle of the afternoon. The Russian planes returned intact. There were no immediate military consequences for Russia. No aircraft shot down, no base struck in retaliation, no escalation mechanism activated. This is Putin's real victory on June 20: absolute impunity. The ability to kill Ukrainian civilians in broad daylight, before the eyes of the entire world, without it changing anything in the global strategic equation.

As long as this impunity persists, the bombs will continue to fall. On Zaporizhzhia, on Kharkiv, on Sumy, on every Ukrainian city within reach of Russian Su-34s. The answer — not the only one, but the most urgent — is to provide Ukraine with the means to destroy these planes before they drop their bombs, and to lift the restrictions preventing Kyiv from striking the bases they take off from. It is a matter of moral consistency as much as military strategy.

### What history will remember

In a few years, when historians write the history of this war, they will read thousands of articles like this one. Tolls, figures, governors' statements, presidents' tweets. And perhaps they will wonder why, faced with such overwhelming and repeated evidence of deliberate terror led by Russia against civilian populations, the West so often responded with prudence, red lines, and half-measures. History will be harsh — or it will remember that despite everything, the West held firm. It is up to us alone to decide which of these two versions we want to leave behind.

The five dead in Zaporizhzhia this June 20, 2026, deserve better than to be one more statistic in a quarterly report. They deserve for their deaths to count for something — to strengthen the collective determination to support Ukraine until Russia stops bombing civilians. This is the minimum we owe them. This is the minimum we owe ourselves, as democracies that claim to defend an international order founded on law and human dignity.

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

## Sources

### Sources primaires

- [Ukrinform — Russia strikes Zaporizhzhia with nine glide bombs: Four killed, six injured — June 20, 2026](https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/4135949-russia-strikes-zaporizhzhia-with-nine-gide-bombs-four-killed-six-injured.html)

- [Ukrainska Pravda — Russians attack Zaporizhzhia: four killed and six injured (Fedorov statement) — June 20, 2026](https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/06/20/8040327/)

- [Ukrinform — Russia prepared for new massive strike – Zelensky (presidential address) — June 20, 2026](https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/4135964-russia-prepared-for-new-massive-strike-zelensky.html)

### Sources secondaires

- [Kyiv Independent — At least 5 dead, 10 injured in Russian bombing in Zaporizhzhia (Fedorov: 'Russia is a terrorist state') — June 20, 2026](https://kyivindependent.com/at-least-5-dead-10-injured-in-russian-bombing-in-zaporizhzhia/)

- [Ukrainska Pravda — Russian forces launch over 800 strikes on Zaporizhzhia Oblast in one day, injuring 19 people — June 20, 2026](https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/06/20/8040261/)

- [Euromaidan Press — While Russia talks about 9 May ceasefire, its guided bombs just killed 12 people in Zaporizhzhia — May 5, 2026](https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/05/05/while-russia-talks-about-9-may-ceasefire-its-guided-bombs-just-killed-12-people-in-zaporizhzhia/)

- [Militarnyi — Russian Glide Bombs Strike Targets Despite Electronic Warfare (technical analysis UMPK/KAB) — June 9, 2026](https://militarnyi.com/en/news/russian-glide-bombs-zaporizhzhia-despite-ew/)

- [Defence Express — NATO Announces €250,000 Defense Challenge Seeking Solutions Against Russian Airfields / Italy PURL refusal — June 20, 2026](https://en.defence-ua.com/)

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Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/reportage-zaporijjia-sous-les-bombes-planantes-5-morts-9-kab-en-un-apres-midi-2