KYIV – There was no warning – no whistling sound of a missile or buzz of a drone that usually heralds a Russian attack. There was just an explosion, a resident said, and then a pile of smouldering rubble where a small shopping centre once stood.

       Local officials say the device used in that attack on the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia in September was a Russian glide bomb – the first indication, they say, that Russia would begin targeting their city with the powerful weapon.

       Since then, local officials say, glide bombs have frequently struck the city, wounding more than 100 people and killing at least two. They are considered especially dangerous because they are hard to intercept.

       “They suddenly go boom,” said Mr Stanislav, a retiree, describing the attacks. “We are worried.”

       Glide bombs have been deployed by Russian forces to pound Ukrainian front-line positions throughout the war, and have been used against cities close to the Russian border, like Kharkiv, in recent months.

       But major cities farther from the border like Zaporizhzhia, which were once seen as out of reach of the weapons, are increasingly being struck, local officials, residents and military experts say.

       It is unclear why Zaporizhzhia – once considered relatively safe – has come under attack by the glide bombs, which are unguided Soviet-era bombs converted into long-range, precision weapons with a “guidance kit” of small wings and fins. The bombs are launched from planes, usually at a safe distance from Ukrainian air defences, and then glide to their targets.

       Many experts say they believe that Russia is now able to hit Zaporizhzhia because it somehow modified the bombs to extend their range.

       Whatever the reason for the increasing threat the glide bombs pose to Zaporizhzhia, it is clear that the attacks have shaken the city, which has become a haven for civilians fleeing the fighting to the east.

       The city is strategically important for Ukraine’s defence of the south. It is a centre for train and highway transportation and has a large steel industry that supports weapons production in Ukraine. And it is symbolically important as the capital of the Zaporizhzhia region, which Russia has sought to annex.

       The use of the bombs is especially worrisome because their flight time is so brief that air-raid sirens warning of their approach usually go off only shortly before the bombs hit, if at all.

       “People in the city tell us that they have started sleeping in their clothes as these air bombs are so quiet, you only hear it once it explodes,” said Ms Natalia Ardalianova, who works with Artak, a charity that helps to evacuate civilians from Zaporizhzhia. “The situation has definitely changed – we sleep less now.”

       Ms Kateryna Klymenko, a mother of three who works as a district council lawyer, also complained about not being able to sleep much since the glide bomb attacks began. She said she had joined other city employees at night to aid victims of attacks and was appalled by the scale of the destruction she sees.

       “That scares me more than sounds of explosions,” she said.

       The first cities to be hit with what local officials said were glide bombs were in north-east Ukraine in 2024. Sumy was the first to be struck, in February, then Kharkiv, with bombardments intensifying in May.

       Mr Oleh Krulikovsky, the head of an emergency services team in the Zaporizhzhia region, said that more civilians were being injured because the glide bombs, less precise than ballistic missiles, rely on shrapnel to maximise damage over a wider area.

       “The shrapnel flies up to 250m,” he said. “I keep begging people to at least hide behind a wall if they see that they will not make it to the bomb shelter.”

       “It is a big danger,” said Dr Marina Miron, a doctoral researcher at the war studies department at King’s College London. “Glide bombs are very destructive tactical and operational weapons.”

       For civilians in Zaporizhzhia who fled fierce fighting in the front-line Donbas region, the glide bomb strikes are making them fearful they will be displaced yet again. Longer-term residents who had come to believe they were relatively safe are also increasingly fearful.

       In 2022, at the beginning of the war, when Zaporizhzhia was repeatedly hit by missiles, Ms Klymenko, the district council lawyer, said she fled the city with her children and moved to Lithuania. But she found living in a foreign country hard and came back.

       Her husband, who as a man of draft age cannot leave Ukraine, is trying to persuade her to leave again with the children. But Ms Klymenko said she would leave only if a bomb landed in her yard.

       “In three years,” she said, “we felt like we would die many times, but we survived, and we’ll survive now too.” NYTIMES