would love to know. because they really don't tend to do that, unless they are in the process of crashing into the thicker athmosphere. And that was not the case, as it's sharing a close enough orbit to the iss
They sure don't tend to do that, but there are still mundane explanations for this. An unintentional collision between the satellite and another object being one of them.
"I find it hard to believe they would use such a big satellite as an ASAT target," McDowell said.
Considering all the ways they've been ridiculously incompetent in their invasion of Ukraine, I could actually see this incident being due to ineptitude.