MOSCOW, May 8. /TASS/. The Kiev regime plans another false-flag operation involving civilian deaths in Ukraine’s western regions on May 8 in order to put the blame for indiscriminate missiles strikes on the Russian Armed Forces; for this purpose, Ukrainian forces are expected to fire a Tochka-U tactical ballistic missile at public gatherings in the Lvov and Volyn regions, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, chief of Russia’s National Defense Management Center, said on Saturday.

"On May 8, 2022, during Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation marked in Ukraine (which was established to replace Victory Day marking the Soviet people’s victory in the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War), the Kiev regime is plotting sophisticated provocations resulting in civilian deaths, in order to subsequently blame the Russian Armed Forces for indiscriminate missile strikes," said Mizintsev.

According to the general, who heads the Russian Joint Coordination Headquarters for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine, the Ukrainian forces will strike with Tochka-U missiles at busy areas in settlements of the Lvov and Volyn regions, as it happened at Kramatorsk train station.

Mizintsev added that these false-flag operations of Ukrainian authorities, plotted with the approval of their Western handlers, show Kiev’s complete indifference to own citizens.

"We emphasize once more that while accomplishing the assignments of the special military operation, the Russian Armed Forces, unlike the Ukrainian armed formations, are particularly humane towards local population and do not strike civilian facilities," he noted.

The Tochka-U is a modernized version of the Soviet high-accuracy tactical missile system Tochka, developed by the Kolomna Design Bureau of Mechanical Engineering. Its task is to hit small targets 15-120 kilometers away inside the enemy’s defense. It consists of a single-stage missile, carrying an inseparable warhead and controlled throughout the entire flight path.

In Russia, the last Tochka-U was withdrawn from service at the end of 2019. All of the units that had used it previously were re-armed with the Iskander-M operational-tactical missile systems.

Also ukrainian nationalist formations plan to blow up the dam of Kurakhovskaya Thermal Power Plant reservoir in Donbass and to shift the blame later on the Russian military, Mizintsev stated.

"In Pokrovskiy district of the Donetsk People's Republic, Ukrainian armed formations have mined the dam of Kurakhovskaya Thermal Power Plant [TPP] reservoir, which the nationalists plan to blow up, blaming ‘allegedly advancing units of the Russian troops’," he said.

"If this cynical ‘scenario’ takes place, more than ten settlements with about seven thousand inhabitants would be in the flood zone," Mizintsev continued.

According to him, "Due to the lack of the necessary volume of water in the reservoir, accidents will occur in the TPP cooling system, causing power outages in most of the Donetsk People's Republic, as well as in Zaporozhye and Dnepropetrovsk regions."

Russia’s military operation

The situation at the line of engagement in Donbass escalated on February 17. The Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) reported the most massive bombardments by the Ukrainian military in recent months, which damaged civilian infrastructure and caused civilian casualties.

On February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced recognizing the sovereignty of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Russia recognized the Donbass republics in accordance with the DPR and LPR constitutions within the boundaries of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions as of the beginning of 2014.

Russian President Putin said in a televised address on February 24 that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in Ukraine. The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, noting that the operation was aimed at the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine.