West deems recent Russian shelling of Ukraine as start of winter campaign
The West considers the recent intense Russian shelling of Ukraine as the start of a winter campaign of strikes, according to Sky News.
"We've been highlighting over the past few weeks the potential for Russia to launch a concerted winter campaign of strikes against Ukrainians' critical energy infrastructure and we've assessed that last night, Russia probably attempted to initiate this activity," an unnamed Western official told the news agency.
He reminded that the strikes on Ukrainian territory were conducted using Tu-95 bombers, "which actually haven't been deployed and used for the last couple of months or so." Additionally, the occupiers utilized precision missiles.
"Despite tragically at least one civilian being reported killed, the damage appears to be minimal," added the official.
The source emphasized that this missile attack "from the point of view of an intelligence side "was not coordinated with the drone attacks regularly conducted by the occupiers."
Massive missile strike
Today, on December 8, at night, Russian occupiers carried out a massive missile strike on Ukraine for the first time in several months.
The air defense forces managed to shoot down 14 out of 19 X-101/X-555 missiles launched by the occupiers using Tu-95 bombers.
Unfortunately, there were hits resulting in the loss of one life.
For more details on the aftermath of the occupiers' overnight strike, you can find the information in RBC-Ukraine's material.