Ukrainian air attacks on Russian territory have become a common occurrence, although it was hard to imagine in the first months of a full-scale war. Due to Ukraine's resistance to Russian armed aggression, the military actions declared by Putin Special Military Operation have moved to Russian lands in the form of military actions in the Kursk region of Russia and attacks on military facilities. In response, Russian propagandists are trying to downplay the scale of Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory by inventing new terms. One of these is ‘smoke’. This is a euphemism used to replace the concept of a fire or hitting a target within the internationally recognized borders of Russia, which is undesirable for Russian ears. They say that if it is just ‘smoke’, then neither the attack nor its consequences are serious. However, ‘smoke’ does not always harm the Russian army.

For example, on October 9, 2024, Ukrainian UAVs attacked a storage base for about 400 Shahed UAVs located in Russia's Krasnodar Krai. The Ukrainian side recorded a precise hit on the target. A secondary detonation was also observed on the site. At the same time, Russian propaganda sources, responding to this attack, wrote that there was a ‘fire’ in the storage facilities and ‘heavy smoke in Azov’.

By using the term smoke, Russian propagandists are deliberately trying to deny Ukraine's successful strikes on Russian infrastructure facilities, which allow the occupation war to continue. In turn, according to the Kremlin's logic, ordinary Russians should not think that such ‘emergency situations’ are an echo of a real war.