KHARKIV OBLAST, UKRAINE, May 6 — On May 5, the Russian army dropped a FAB-1500 air-dropped bomb on the village of Monachynivka, Kharkiv region, Kharkiv Regional Police reported. The attack killed an 88-year-old woman. Rescuers pulled her body from under the rubble.

According to Serhii Bolvinov, head of the Investigation Department of the Kharkiv Oblast Police, this is the first documented case of Russians using this bomb in the region since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.

The FAB-1500 is an unguided bomb with a high-explosive warhead, developed in the Soviet Union in 1954. In 2023, Russians equipped their unguided, highly explosive bombs of different weights with a gliding module that allows Russian fighters and bombers to drop the bomb 25–30 miles away from their target.

According to Serhii Bolvinov, that’s exactly what they’ve done with this FAB-1500. “This is the first [documented] instance of the weapon of such power used against us,” he said.

“No more than a hundred locals lived in this border village of Kupiansk district, and not a single military man,” Bolvinov said.

Bolvinov said that, despite such a powerful attack, residents of Monachynivka helped the police to document the destruction and deal with the aftermath of the attack.

Russians attack the Kharkiv region, which borders Russia, daily. They strike the towns and villages of the region with S-300 missiles, Iranian-made Shahed drones, glide bombs, and mortars.

Earlier, the ISW (Institute for the Study of War) think tank reported, referring to Russian sources, that Russians dropped at least ten FAB-1500 bombs on Ukrainian positions on the Kupiansk axis.

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