The claims they are trying to minimize damage are misguided.
And even if the facts are 100% true, it doesn't mean automatically that they want terror. They might just be helpless about it (doesn't excuse it of course).
I mean how do you accidentally destroy maternity ward of a hospital? How likely is that to be an accident and opposed to deliberate terror bombing?
And then there's the kidnapping of Ukrainian officials and replacing them with collaborants. That is deliberate terror tactics as well. Watching them in action makes me thing their approach didn't really change since their Katyn days.
But I live in a place Russians visited in 1968 leaving in the 90's so you could say I'm biased.
The largest difference is scale (well, and perception in the media, though that is to be expected). The US may have bombed 1 or 2 hospitals in, say, Afghanistan, while the Russians seem to be on track for bombing 10 or more as this war drags on.
An army that uses un-ecrypted radio communicatuon and pins artillery targets on google maps labelled as 'farm' probably doesn't have the best targeting.
US has far better targetting, and they bomb two weddings or a funerals a year.
What we do know for sure two facts: the demoralised, corrupt and lying system goes all the day through soldiers, officers, generals, there is probably no accountability.
And that putin came to power by blowing up apartment blocks while his own people were asleep in them, so he is largely capable of anything
That's actually fairly easy without precision munitions or with bad targeting info. Stuff like that happens in war sometimes.
What makes it clear that it is not just that is (1) the frequency of repetitions, and (2) the explanations.
In Mariupol, which was a maternity and children's hospital, not the maternity ward of a hospital, that was destroyed, Russia first claimed they didn't do it at all and that it was Ukrainian propaganda, and that they probably did it to themselves, the claimed they (Russia) did attack it intentionally but that it had not been used as a hospital for years and was an Azov Battalion base and the women and children shown as victims were crisis actors, then finally (last story I heard) claimed they didn't know what happened and were investigating the incident.
Ukrainian state is already in a state of total war, they don't lose anything by escalating. Their goal is to drag other countries into the war, or at the very least maximize external support. Exaggerations, taking stuff out of context, hyperbolizing isolated incidents, or even outright lies - all the tools of trade are normally shunned are now allowed. Level-headed assessment of ground-level truth is not on the agenda right now