Our buddy Kissinger again showed his prophetic abilities (not that his ilk, aka the Jєωs, planned it all) when he prognosticated that the conflict would escalate in mid-August. Well, he was a few weeks early in his prediction, so perhaps his waning intellectual abilities manifested themselves here ... or, rather, the Jєωs had some reason to postpone their plans.
In any case, the Ukrainian propaganda has been that there was a major "counter-offensive" where Ukraine took back large swaths of territory in the Kharkiv region. Evidently that was just propaganda, as the Russians started withdrawing from there 8 days ago, and the Ukrainians just walked in to various abandoned outposts.
So one thought was that this was the famous Russian tactic of pulling out to draw the troops in so that they can be surrounded. But reportedly the intent here was precisely to set up this next phase. Withdrawal was actually ahead of this planned bombing, and the bombing was carried out so that they could cripple Ukraine's ability to send US and NATO arms to the front. In particular, they wanted to stop or slow down the trains that are carrying these armaments so as to destroy them.
Evidently the Russian public are getting tired of this stretching out so long and there has been pressure on Putin to escalate, especially from the right wing. Thus far he has tried to avoid taking out civilian infrastructure, but it seems like the pressure from the right has gotten too strong, so he had to up the game. Every time a Russian soldier died because Putin has been so "soft" in conducting this operation, that increased pressure on Putin to escalate.
But I marvel at what a political genius Kissinger is, that he could make these accurate predictions. No wonder he had all these high-ranking positions in every US administration for the past 80 years or so.