Putin takes revenge for the Kursk attack with glide bombs

In the sprawling and unlovely village of Billopilya, only five miles from Ukraine’s border with Russia, when death comes, it comes from the skies. Moscow had been targeting the hardscrabble settlement with glide bombs – known here as KABs – ever since Ukrainian troops smashed their way into the Kursk region on 6 August.

Vladimir Putin’s troops may be struggling to contain the estimated 6,000 Ukrainian soldiers now in Russia proper. Kyiv’s forces have seized a salient of land that encompasses more than 1,000 square kilometres. But even as Moscow slowly musters the forces to fight back against the incursion, it has ratcheted up attacks on Ukrainian civilians in apparent revenge for the surprise cross-border attack.

When I visited the village over the weekend, the few locals who had not fled to safer areas were on edge. Sasha, a 63-year-old construction worker, gestured to the house next door.