

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a PR spin.
I imagine the conversation going something like this:
"Holy shit, the Ukrainians almost hit the presidential helicopter. This makes us look real bad.
Okay, here’s what we do. We tell everybody that it was us, and it was totally on purpose so they don’t realize how close the Ukrainians came to winning the war"
Sure, but “retaliatory strikes” would probably be a more accurate descriptor. “Attack” often carries the implication of a first strike