MOSCOW, December 12. /TASS/. The Ukrainian armed forces are opting to attack civilians in lieu of their inability to win on the battlefield, Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s ambassador-at-large in charge of overseeing the Kiev regime’s crimes, said at a briefing.

"Having been defeated and suffering significant losses on the battlefield, the Ukrainian armed forces are redirecting their military capabilities towards carrying out strikes on civilians and civilian infrastructure, at the instruction of their political authorities. Such incidents have been reported in almost all Russian regions adjacent to the line of contact and the Ukrainian border. The Kiev authorities are now graduating to carrying out acts of terrorism against public figures in a bid to influence Russia’s public opinion," he pointed out.

In the meantime, "they are taking steps to establish a dictatorship in the areas the Kiev regime still controls."

"In analyzing the nature of the strikes Ukrainian militants carry out and the weapons and warfare methods they use, it is safe to say that they are deliberately killing civilians, harming them and destroying civilian infrastructure with a full understanding of the consequences of their actions, which can be regarded as the Kiev regime’s crimes against civilians," Miroshnik noted.

"Western taxpayers are paying for all this as weapons are being purchased with funds from Western budgets, money that could have been spent on healthcare, social security, the fight against hunger and the search for treatments for deadly diseases; however, they were allocated to kill women, children and elderly people and make their life unbearable," the diplomat emphasized.