- Ukraine attacked a Russian airbase with long-range drones last month.
- Russia used the Marinovka airfield to facilitate front-line strikes and kept glide bombs stored there.
Newly released satellite imagery shows the extensive damage at a Russian airbase after it was hit by Ukrainian drones last month.
Ukraine used long-range drones in an August 22 attack on the Marinovka airfield in Russia's Volgograd region, which was used to facilitate strikes on the front lines.
A source in the Security Service of Ukraine told Business Insider at the time that the attack destroyed warehouses that stored fuel, ammunition, and highly destructive glide bombs. However, the full extent of the damage was unclear.
On Monday, nearly three weeks after the attack, Britain's defense ministry said in an intelligence update that Ukraine caused "widespread destruction to key infrastructure and equipment" at Marinovka.
The UK said the attack destroyed four aircraft shelters and damaged three more. It also destroyed a radome (a protective enclosure for radar equipment), support buildings, and open storage area facilities.
The UK published satellite images captured by Maxar Technologies from August 19, three days before the attack, and August 24, two days after the attack, to highlight the extensive damage at Marinovka.
"The SBU works with surgical precision at the airfields from which the enemy attacks Ukraine," the SBU source said in translated remarks shared with BI.
Each strike, like the one at Marinovka, "reduces the superiority of the Russians in the air and significantly limits their aviation capabilities," they added.
Ukraine is prohibited from using its arsenal of Western-provided missiles to strike Russia, so it has relied on locally produced, long-range drones to target Moscow's military and energy facilities.
Kyiv has specifically tried to curb the threat of Russia's glide bombs during a monthslong campaign against airfields.
Glide bombs are dumb bombs equipped with special kits that turn them into precision-guided munitions. They are notoriously difficult to intercept because they have short flight times, small radar signatures, and travel on non-ballistic trajectories.
Russia has used these deadly weapons — some weighing over 6,000 pounds — to inflict significant damage on Ukrainian cities and troop positions.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Russia used over 800 glide bombs in a single week.
"Terror can only be reliably stopped in one way: by striking Russian military airfields, their bases, and the logistics of Russian terror," he wrote in a post on X. "We must achieve this."
The only way for Ukraine to defeat this threat is to shoot down the Russian aircraft before it releases any glide bombs or destroy the aircraft and the bombs on the ground at their bases. Kyiv has attempted to do this through its long-range strike campaign.