The United States believes that Russia was planning massive airstrikes in Ukraine even before the explosion of the Crimean bridge.
This was stated by the spokesman of the National Security Council of the White House, John Kirby, in a comment to CNN.
"Most likely, this was something that they had been planning for quite some time. But that does not mean that the explosion on the Crimean bridge could have accelerated some of their plans," said Kirby.
According to him, attacks of this scale could not have been planned in a few days.
Kirby also failed to say whether Putin has finally shifted from a strategy of losing a war on the battlefield to a campaign to undermine civilian morale and cause devastating damage to Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.