Defense Intelligence of Ukraine states that russian forces received an order to prepare for a massive missile attack, that struck 15 out of 25 regions of Ukraine on October 10 morning, in fact, a week prior, on October 2-3.
According to the military intel, strategic long-range aviation bases were ordered to prepare for the strikes on Ukrainian critical infrastructure and populous central areas of major cities.
Read more: Massive Missile Attack on Ukrainian Infrastructure: What We Know So Far
On October 8, seven strategic bombers of Tu-160 type were redeployed from Olenya air base to Engels air base and equipped with Kh-101 missiles.
In the Black Sea, six missile cruisers with 40 Kalibr missiles were deployed on the raid in the outer waters. The sudden increase in the number of sea-based missile carriers was noted in the report of the Operational Command "South" a few hours before the first strike – four cruisers and two submarines.
As suggested by the OSINT community InformNapalm, it is incorrect to link this massive missile attack with the explosion on the Crimea (Kerch) Bridge in some sort of russian "vengeance" for the destruction of an important artery of russian logistics in the south.
"Currently, it looks more likely that the explosion on the bridge itself was part of the information campaign in preparation for the massive missile strikes." The analytics assume that president putin needed to "stir up" russian society to show he is still in power and capable to punish those who get in his way with a wave of terror.
As for the bridge, InformNapalm says the explosion was set up by russian FSB on a segment that is easy to repair in order to create a pretext for the terroristic answer.
On the part of Defense Express, we should note that there are various versions of what caused the explosion in the occupied Crimea, some of them pointing to russian, some to Ukrainian special services. Anyway, the indiscriminate attacks on civilian infrastructure constitute a war crime and cannot be justified by "vengeance".
Read more: Over 37 Hours Without Sleep and 120 Destroyed Targets: How HIMARS Annihilated russians in Kherson Oblast
