The TRUE story of the Russian dam that blew up in Ukraine
The recent disaster is just the latest chapter in a 70-year-old story
The story of the Nova Kakhovka Dam started in 1950, when Josef Stalin ordered that a dam and a hydroelectric power plant be built to provide irrigation for the southern region of Kherson and critically needed fresh water and power to the Crimean peninsula.
It’s all about Crimea, folks
The story of the Nova Kakhovka Dam started in 1950, when Josef Stalin ordered that a dam and a hydroelectric power plant be built to provide irrigation for the southern region of Kherson and critically needed fresh water and power to the Crimean peninsula.
Here’s what’s in this article
I have broken this rather long article into several Parts:
Part 1: What Khrushchev did — this explains the historical significance of Crimea and how it came to become part of Ukraine.
Part 2: What Yatsenyuk did — this explains the circumstances that caused Russia to annex Crimea in 2014
Part 3: What Putin did — this explains Putin’s actions around Crimea since the launch of his “Special Military Operation”
Part 4: What Zelensky did — this part discusses the actions taken by the Ukrainians that led up to the catastrophe at the Nova Kakhovka Dam.
Part 5: Cui bono? — this part addresses the question of who benefits the most from the Kakhovka disaster, and so which side is most likely responsible.
Part 6: Conclusions - here I sum up the arguments made in the entire piece.
Part 1: What Khrushchev did
Crimea was part of Russia starting in 1783, when the Tsarist Empire annexed it a decade after defeating Ottoman forces in the Battle of Kozludzha.
It remained a part of Russia until 1954, when the Soviet government transferred Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federation of Socialist Republics (RSFSR) to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (UkrSSR).
Nikita Khrushchev gave Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 after the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union passed the decree to hand over the Crimean region from the structure of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) to the Ukrainian SSR within the Soviet Union.
The decision had to do with economics and agriculture — the building of a hydro-electric dam on the Dnieper River which would irrigate Ukraine’s southern region of Kherson and Crimea, a peninsula the size of the US State of Massachusetts.
Sergei Khrushchev, son of the Soviet leader, explains his father’s reasoning:
“As the Dnieper and the hydro-electric dam [is] on Ukrainian territory, let’s transfer the rest of the territory of Crimea under the Ukrainian supervision so they will be responsible for everything,” Sergei Khrushchev said. “And they did it. It was not a political move, it was not an ideological move — it was just business.”
The Kakhovka Dam project was important for three reasons:
The project included building a 400 kilometre long canal (The North Crimean Canal) to carry water from the city of Tavriysk in the Kherson region to Crimea.
It also included building The Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP) to provide electricity to Crimea.
The dam would permit the creation of a huge reservoir that could be used to irrigate crops in southern Kherson and especially in Crimea, which lacks its own local water sources.
Khrushchev said it made sense to have one entity responsible for the building of such a large project.
The North Crimean Canal
The canal has long been of huge strategic importance to Moscow. In the aftermath of WWII, Stalin realised that supplying water to Crimea was one of the Soviet Union’s strategic priorities. Crimea was a place where Russians were resettled following the wholesale deportation of Crimean Tatars.
Crimea was also important because it had been the home of Russia’s vaunted Black Sea Fleet since 1783. The home port of Sevastopol, which was “reduced to rubble” during WWII, was being rebuilt to host not just the Russian fleet, but also the fleets of Romania and Bulgaria.
The power and water to be supplied to Crimea by the Kakhovka Dam project was critical to these undertakings.
After the Kakhovka Dam and its accompanying Kakhovka Reservoir was created in the lower reaches of the Dnipro river in the early 1950s, the construction of the North Crimean Canal began in 1957.
The first half of the canal is self-flowing, while the other sections are operated by a four-stage mechanical water lift.
To ensure a stable water supply, six reservoirs and 126 pumping stations were built in Crimea, along with some 14,000 kilometres of collector and drainage networks.
Until 2014, more than 1.2 billion cubic metres of water from the Dnipro river was supplied through the canal to Crimea for drinking water supply and irrigation.
Why the dam is so important
As mentioned above, the Kakhovka Dam project was strategically important for the Soviet Union. However, it was also important for the Russian Federation, as the electricity from the The Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant provides power to Crimea’s 2.5 million residents, as well as to the vast naval and military facilities at Sevastopol.
Moreover, before 2014, Ukraine provided for 85% of Crimea’s fresh water needs through the North Crimean Canal, which connects the Dnieper with the peninsula.
What happened in 2014 changed everything.
Part 2: What Yatsenyuk did
The events that took place on Maidan Square in Kiev in 2014 were extremely consequential — they set off a series of events that ultimately led to the current conflict. As Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO Secretary General, recently declared, “the war started in 2014”.
It all started with a coup
On February 22, 2014, a US-backed coup d’état took place in Ukraine, and the duly elected — but “Russian-friendly” — President, Viktor Yanukovych, followed the instructions of then US Vice President Joe Biden and fled the country for his life.
A few days later, an interim government took power in Kiev. The people in power were all hand-picked by the United States, and were all pro-Western and pro-EU.
Then, two things happened: first, the interim Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, declared that Ukraine would sign the EU Association Agreement that Yanukovych had turned down (Yatsenyuk later also declared Ukraine’s intention to join NATO).
Next, Vladimir Putin condemned the coup as illegitimate and moved Russian soldiers into position in Crimea in order to annex the peninsula and “lock down” the Russian naval and military facilities.
No one saw this coming
When Nikita Khrushchev gave Crimea to Ukraine in 1954, he was probably not worried by the fact that Sevastopol, Russia’s only warm-water naval base, would no longer be technically “in Russia”. Crimea was, after all, Russian to its core, and he no doubt believed that the “fraternal peoples” of Russia and Ukraine would get along forever.
There was no way that he could have ever envisioned a time when Russia and Ukraine would find themselves on opposite strategic sides militarily.
Unfortunately, that was the case in 2014.
The US Navy had been training with the Ukrainian Navy since 2010. The Russians undoubtedly knew this.
They no doubt also knew that the US Navy was planning to set up an engineering facility in Sevastopol to train Ukrainians in maintaining US naval vessels and equipment (the plans were canceled in April 2014 for obvious reasons).
If Ukraine did accede to NATO, it was a safe bet that Sevastopol would become the new home of the US Navy’s Sixth Fleet.
That could not be allowed to happen, in Putin’s view.
The annexation of Crimea
A few weeks after the Maidan Coup, on March 21, 2014, Ukrainian interim PM Yatsenyuk signed the EU Association Agreement. That very same day, Putin signed the annexation of Crimea into law.
The annexation order followed a referendum in Crimea, in which over 95% of the Crimean population voted to reject the Ukraine coup government and accede to Russia.
The response from Kiev was swift and vicious.
The Yatsenyuk administration moved quickly to “punish” the Crimeans for their decision to rejoin Russia.
Cutting off Crimea’s water
In response to the annexation, the Kiev regime immediately set about building a new dam at the 107th kilometre of the North Crimean Canal. The purpose of the dam was to shut off the water supply to Crimea from the Kakhovka Reservoir.
The Kiev regime immediately blocked the Northern Crimean Canal with bags of sand and clay, and then proceeded to build a permanent structure that would give Kiev a choke-hold on Crimea’s water in perpetuity — exactly what Khrushchev wanted to avoid.
The damming of the North Crimean Canal was catastrophic for the people of Crimea, who had relied on the dam to provide almost all of their water.
The damming of the canal meant that Crimea had to go on water rationing immediately.
Worse yet, since 2015 Crimea has seen an unprecedented level of drought in the summer. Starting in 2018, Crimea had to declare a regular summertime state of emergency with households receiving water for only a few hours a day. In fact, the drought was so bad in 2018 that one of the largest rivers of Crimea, the Biyuk-Karasu, dried up.
Satellite images from 2018 show increasing desertification in the Crimean peninsula, which is already arid normally, particularly in the central and northern steppes.
Agricultural output plummeted, with cultivation of water-intensive crops like rice coming to a halt. In 2014, only 17,000 hectares of land were being tilled, compared to 140,000 the previous year and 400,000 in the Soviet era.
Crimea’s dependence on water from the Kakhovka Reservoir only increased in recent years as the population of the peninsula grew to almost three million. This made the water shortage more critical.
Knock-on effects for industry and agriculture
Over two-thirds of the water that the North Crimea Canal was used for agriculture and industry. As mentioned above, Crimean agriculture was decimated and rice production— once the major source of rice for Russia — fell to zero.
Over two-thirds of the water that the North Crimea Canal was used for agriculture and industry. As mentioned above, Crimean agriculture was decimated and rice production— once the major source of rice for Russia — fell to zero.
But there were other problems.
Disaster at a Crimean chemical plant
Water shortages can also lead to industrial accidents. Crimea is home to large chemical enterprises, such as the Crimean Titan in Armyansk, as well as Crimean Soda Plant and Brom in Krasnoperekopsk.
They all require large amounts of fresh water daily in order to operate safely.
For example, the acute water shortage eventually caused an accident at the Crimean TITAN chemical plant in 2018. The plant, which produces produces titanium dioxide, mineral fertilisers, and sulphuric acid. The plant stored its production waste in a special acid reservoir, where the waste was diluted with a large volume of water.
When Ukraine cut off the water supply, the reservoir started to dry up, until, due to lack of water, the reservoir started releasing sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. The emission of harmful chemicals into the air forced the local authorities to evacuate more than 5,000 people from the area.
Russia resorts to alternate solutions
To solve the water problem, Russia started trucking in water over the Kerch Strait Bridge. They also started building desalination plants and digging wells.
Drinking water was brought over the famous Kerch Strait Bridge (aka Crimea Bridge) that Russia built in record time. It opened for traffic in 2018, with Vladimir Putin himself being the first person to drive across the record 19 km long structure.
In 2021, Russia even went to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to sue Ukraine over the damming of the canal, accusing Ukraine of “genocide” and depriving Crimeans of their human right to water.
Sergei Aksyonov, Crimea’s governor, said in written comments to the Financial Times:
“Kyiv has essentially used Crimea’s infrastructure dependence on Ukraine, which came about in the Soviet era, as a weapon of mass destruction against all Crimeans. The water blockade is an act of state terrorism and ecocide, but the international community is failing to notice the Kyiv regime’s crimes”.
Cutting off Crimea’s power
In addition to cutting off the water, Ukraine also cut off electricity to Crimea. Twice.
An “impossible problem” for Putin
Bloomberg News wrote in 2021 that the water crisis in Crimea was posing an “impossible problem” for Putin. Between having to truck in water, dig wells, build desalination plants, enforce water rationing, and provide alternate power whenever the Ukrainians decided to cut the power to the peninsula, estimates say Russia spent 1.5 trillion Rubles on Crimea from 2014 to 2019 alone. The water shortages alone were costing the Crimean economy an estimated 14 billion rubles ($210 million) each year.
Indeed, given the aforementioned military buildup on the peninsula, and the migration to Crimea by both Russians and Russophile Ukrainians, the unmet needs of industry, agriculture as well as the general public’s water supply, the situation must have been seeming untenable by 2022.
Putin clearly had to do something.
Part 3: What Putin did
Vladimir Putin famously gave three reasons for launching his “Special Military Operation”:
Safeguard and protect the people in the Donbas and their fledgling republics
De-Nazify the Kiev regime — i.e., liquidate the Azov Battalion and the other Nazi groups
Demilitarise Ukraine and restore it to neutrality — i.e., kick NATO and the US out of Ukraine.
What Putin did NOT mention, but what must have been clearly on his mind, was the strategically important goal of “restoring the flow of water to Crimea”.
Unblocking the North Crimean Canal
As reported on National Public Radio and elsewhere at the time, one of Russia’s priorities in the Ukraine conflict was indeed to restore the flow of water to Crimea.
By mid-morning of February 24, 2022 the Russian military had already captured all the facilities of the Kakhovskaya HPP in Nova Kakhovka.
Within three days, the Russians had gained control of all hydrotechnical facilities and the North Crimean Canal Authority in Tavriysk, a city on the left bank of the Dnieper located about ten kilometres east of Nova Kakhovka.
The Russian military subsequently blew up the canal dam the Ukrainians had built in 2014 .
Anna Olenenko, an agriculture historian from the Khortytsia National Academy in Zaporizhzhia, pointed out that blowing up the dam and restarting the flow of water toward Crimea was one of Russia’s first acts of the war:
“I think that this shows us the importance of that issue [to Russia],” she says. There were multiple reasons why Russia invaded Ukraine, Olenenko says, and restoring the flow of water to Crimea was one of them. “Putin and the [Russian] government promised to the Crimean people that they would solve the water problem in Crimea”, she said.
The Ukrainians were fuming.
Outraged over having lost a way to “punish Putin” and make life miserable for the ethnically Russian Crimeans, they staged a kangaroo court to hold a trial— in absentia — of the Russian commanders who had ordered the dam to be blown.
The (expected) verdict of guilty was handed down on May 30, 2023. The two officers were sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined for “violating the laws and customs of war”. The Ukrainian authorities even asked Interpol to issue an international arrest warrant for the two Russian officers.
Ukraine is also seeking $406 million in compensation from Russia for the destruction of the dam.
Ukraine had learned just how strategically and morally important Crimea was to Vladimir Putin and to Russia itself.
Part 4: What Zelensky did
When looking at the actions and motivations of Zelensky and the Ukrainians in this matter, we need to consider the way that the Kiev regime regards Russians in general, and ethnic Russian Ukrainians in particular.
Kherson, like Sevastopol, was founded by Catherine the Great in the late 1700’s and built as a fortress to help protect Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. The Kherson region has always been “considered as Russian speaking”. People in big cities of this region, like Odessa, Nikolaev or Kherson mainly speak Russian, but also “understand Ukrainian”.
The region, like most of Eastern Ukraine, is decidedly pro-Russian politically.
Pro-Russian politics
In fact, the regional government is controlled by pro-Russian parties, led by the “Opposition Platform — For Life” party. In 2020, the pro-Russian parties captured twice as many seats on the Kherson City Council as Zelensky’s “Servant of the People” party did.
Known for its pro-Russian alignment, the Opposition Platform party was founded in 2018 after it split from “Opposition Block,” formed in 2014 by six parties that opposed the Maidan Revolution. The pro-Russian party won the 2019 parliamentary elections all over Eastern Ukraine, mostly because of its promise to “make peace” in the Donbas and restore “normal economic cooperation” with Russia, according to a report by the Wilson Center.
The Opposition Platform — For Life party was banned by Zelensky in March 2022, and its leader, Viktor Medvedchuk was arrested for “high treason” in April 2022, and later “deported” to Russia.
Putin proclaimed Kherson — and three other regions of Ukraine — as part of Russia in a triumphal ceremony in the Kremlin on Sept. 30, 2022.
So one might well ask: for Kiev, is the disaster in Kakhovka affecting Ukrainians? Or is it simply damaging “Russia”?
How Kiev sees its “Russian citizens”
It is very common to read Tweets and see videos in which Ukrainians refer to Russian soldiers as “Orcs” and to Russians in general, as well as Russian-speaking Ukrainians as “cockroaches” and even “subhumans”.
We should also keep in mind that the US-installed Prime Minister of the interim coup government, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, was a Pro-Nazi revisionist, racist and ardent Russian hater who promised his government would “cleanse sub-humans” from Eastern Ukraine.
They even published his Nazi plan for ethnic cleansing on the Ukrainian US Embassy web site (the text has since been redacted to substitute “inhumans” for “subhumans”, but the point is unmistakable.
Russian life is cheap
We should not forget that the Kiev regime has been bombing, shelling, sniping, torturing and slaughtering ethnic Russian civilians in the Donbas region non-stop since 2014.
Even now, at the height of the military conflict with Russia, the Ukrainians continue to shell civilians in the city of Donetsk, which has no military facilities or personnel whatsoever.
They simply want to torture and kill the “cockroaches”.
So we need to keep these facts in mind as we evaluate any Ukrainian actions or reactions as they pertain to the “civilians” living in the Eastern or Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine, such as where the Nova Kakhovka Dam was located.
Timeline to disaster
October 2022 — Russia sounds the alarm
On October 18, 2022, General Sergei Surovikin, the commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, stated that the Ukrainians were planning to blow up the Kakhovka Dam.
Ukrainian forces were preparing a massive strike on the dam and had could use US-supplied HIMARS missiles in a major strike. This, he said, could be a disaster.
“We have information on the possibility of the Kyiv regime using prohibited methods of war in the area of the city of Kherson, on the preparation by Kyiv of a massive missile strike on the Kakhovka hydro-electric dam,” Surovikin said.
The Russian Ambassador to the United Nations even sent a formal letter to the Secretary General, warning of an impending attack on the Kakhovka Dam and HPP:
According to Reuters, Ukrainian officials replied by saying the allegation “was a sign that Moscow planned to attack the dam and blame Kyiv”.
November 2022 — Ukraine attacks the Kakhovka Dam
On November 6, 2022, the Kherson region’s Deputy Governor Kirill Stremousov (a Ukrainian) reported that Ukrainian strikes from HIMARS multiple rocket launchers on the Kakhovskaya HPP were carried out during the evacuation of residents of Novaya Kakhovka, located five kilometres down from the hydroelectric power plant dam.
Stremousov, condemned as a “traitor” and “collaborationist” by Kiev, died under mysterious circumstances a few days later. He was posthumously awarded the Order of Courage medal by Vladimir Putin.
November 2022 — Russia pulls out of Kherson
On November 9, 2022, three days after the HIMARS attack on the Kakhovka Dam, Russia announced that it was pulling out of Kherson and removing its troops and equipment from the west (right) bank of the Dnieper River.
Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defense minister, made the announcement citing “the potential flooding of the area” as a main reason for the pullout.
December 2022 — Ukraine admits to Kakhovka “test” attack
On December 29, 2022, the Washington Post published an interview with Maj. Gen. Andriy Kovalchuk, the initial commander of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Kherson region.
During the Ukrainian counteroffensive of autumn 2022, the Nova Kakhovka Dam and the road running along the top of it was targeted with US-supplied M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems — or HIMARS launchers, which have a range of 50 miles .
The road was quickly rendered impassable, but the Russians kept rebuilding crossings in order to resupply their forces. “There were moments when we turned off their supply lines completely, and they still managed to build crossings,” Kovalchuk said.
The Ukrainians were forced to consider more drastic steps:
Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages.
The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort. He held off.
Ukraine decides it is time for the “last resort”
Having damaged one of the floodgates, having had “success” in testing whether they could flood the river, Ukraine found itself 6 months later under severe pressure from its Western benefactors to mount another “counteroffensive”.
Volodymyr Zelensky was in a tough spot. He had to do SOMETHING to appease his Western masters — otherwise they would stop supporting him, stop sending weapons, supplies- and above all, MONEY.
Most observers have reported that the Ukrainian “counteroffensive”, which started on June 4, quickly bogged down, and Ukraine has lost thousands of men and hundreds of vehicles.
By June 5, Putin was bragging about how Russia had stopped the Ukrainians and repelled all their attacks.
It was time to flood the Dnieper.
Raising the water level
The first step in the Ukrainian plan was to boost the water level in the Kakhovka Reservoir. The Ukrainians started doing this in February 2023 as a way to prepare for their much-touted “Spring Counteroffensive”.
Ukraine controls five of the six dams along the Dnipro River, which runs from its northern border with Belarus down to the Black Sea and is crucial for the entire country’s drinking water and power supply. Only the Kakhovka dam — the one farthest downstream in the Kherson region — is controlled by Russian forces.
In other words, all of the water in the Kakhovka Reservoir depends on the five Ukrainian-controlled dams upstream.
Theia-Land, a French organisation that monitors water levels worldwide, shows that the water level in the Kakhovka Reservoir was raised from 14 metres to 17.5 metres in the weeks leading up to the attack.
This was due to the Ukrainians opening up the floodgates on the next dam upstream from Kakhovka — the Dnipro Dam, which runs the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station, the largest hydroelectric power plant in Ukraine.
Russians began warning about the high levels in May.
The increased water levels served two purposes. First, the increased pressure on the dam itself meant that once it was breached, the follow-on surge of water would greatly exacerbate the damage done; second, the increased levels would means greater flood-related damage downstream.
How it was done (theories)
The United Kingdom may well be the “invisible hand” behind this catastrophe — just as they were deeply involved in planning Ukraine’s blowing up the Kerch Strait Bridge and probably played a key role in the destruction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
The British may also have helped Ukraine blow up the Kakhovka Dam. Here’s how.
Storm Shadow
The UK’s Storm Shadow cruise missile, according to its data sheet, “provides a choice of airburst, impact and penetrative modes depending on the target to be attacked”.
“Penetrative mode” means that the missile delivers a charge to the interior of the targeted structure, and a delayed fuse then explodes the ordinance from within the structure.
“Penetrative mode” means that the missile delivers a charge to the interior of the targeted structure, and a delayed fuse then explodes the ordinance from within the structure.
According to the manufacturer’s information, the Storm Shadow is specifically designed to be used against “infrastructure targets” such as the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant.
From Wikipedia:
The Storm Shadow’s BROACH warhead features an initial penetrating charge to clear soil or enter a bunker, then a variable delay fuze to control detonation of the main warhead. Intended targets are command, control and communications centres; airfields; ports and power stations; ammunition management and storage facilities; surface ships and submarines in port; bridges and other high value strategic targets.
This is all very interesting, as most analyses of the incident so far say that the explosion that caused the dam to burst came from INSIDE the dam structure.
In other words precisely in the manner in which a Storm Shadow cruise missile strike would work.
Part 5: Cui bono?
In assigning blame to an incident such as this, where no definitive proof has been presented, one must ask the legal question, “cui bono?” (who benefits?). This Latin phrase, used in law, means that the guilty party is usually the one who benefits most from the crime.
It’s STILL all about Crimea
As described above, Ukraine had gone to great lengths to cut off the water supply to Crimea. As mentioned above, the Russians had been sounding the alarm since October, saying that the Ukrainians were planning to blow up the HPP in order to deprive Crimea of water — again:
“Should the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant’s dam be blown up, the water supply to Crimea would stop,” he said. “If the hydro power plant explodes, the North Crimean Canal would have no water for years to come, until the facility is rebuilt, and Crimea would be left without water, too,” the Russian head of the Novaya Kakhovka administrative district Vladimir Leontyev told the Soloviev Live TV channel on October 14, 2022.
Indeed, Russia’s immediate reaction to the blast was to say, diplomatically speaking, “I told you so”.
It does seem like starving Crimea of water was a major objective for Ukraine all along. During the Ukrainian offensive of autumn 2022, a Ukrainian official even boasted about when they could once more cut the water to the Crimean peninsula:
“When we are able to take control of the town of Tavriysk, located between Nova Kakhovka and Kakhovka, then we can discuss closing the sluice and cutting off water to Crimea,” he said.
This time, it’s personal
I personally cannot help but wonder if the obsession with Crimea is not a personal one for Zelensky.
In May 2023, Russian authorities confiscated Zelensky’s $800,000 luxury penthouse apartment in Crimea.
Olena Zelenska bought an elite apartment in the residential complex “Emperor” in Livadia, near Yalta, on the Black Sea coast from the Ukrainian businessman and former Deputy of the Verkhovna Rada Oleksandr Buryak in 2013 (just before the Maidan Coup).
Who benefits militarily?
It is also pretty straightforward that, militarily speaking, Ukraine benefits most from the dam bursting and flooding. This should not come as a surprise, as we know from Maj. Gen. Andriy Kovalchuk that “flooding the Dnieper” has been a military option for Ukraine since at least December 2022.
Russian defences along the river were wiped out
In November of 2022, Russia withdrew all its forces and equipment from the upper (right) side of the Dnieper River, abandoning their positions and leaving the city of Kherson to be reclaimed by the Ukrainians. As mentioned above, they did this because they feared that continued attacks by the Ukrainians against the dam posed“the potential flooding of the area”.
So they withdrew to the lower (left) bank of the river, where they could easily evacuate if needed, and where they could resupply their forces if needed. They then set about building very advanced and highly fortified defensive positions. They spent 6 months building multi-layered defences to guard against an amphibious attack by Ukraine.
Those defences have been WIPED OUT.
You see, the riverbank on the left (Russian) side is much LOWER than on the Ukrainian side. Indeed, as Natalia Humeniuk, a spokesperson for the Southern Defense Forces, said at a briefing:
The left bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast suffered more than the right one…The left bank is geographically lower than the right one, she said.
“The [death/damage] figures announced regarding flooded settlements are more relevant to the left [Russian] bank”, the official said.
“No critical conditions have actually been recorded on the right [Ukrainian] bank”, the Ukrainian official stated.
Of course, that did not stop Zelensky and his Ukrainian propagandists from pretending it was a major disaster for the Ukrainians:
Speaking in his nightly address on Wednesday, Zelenskyy said that more than 2,000 people have been rescued so far from flooding in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions which, he said, contrasted starkly with Russian-occupied regions where he accused Moscow’s forces of simply abandoning people to the flood.
Of course, this was not true, and Ukrainian TV had to run “B-roll” of RUSSIAN rescuers working on the east bank of the river, pretending they were Ukrainian.
Likewise, Zelensky accused the Russians of shelling those same rescuers:
“Evacuation continues. Under fire!” Zelenskyy said. “Russian artillery continues to fire, no matter what. Savages,” he said.
But — no. It was the Ukrainians who were shelling:
“The difficulty is that in a lot of places they (the rescuers) are forced to work in conditions of ongoing shelling from Ukraine, and this complicates their work,” [Kremlin spokesman] Peskov told reporters.
Ukraine’s “counteroffensive” gets a boost from the disaster
The blowing of the Kakhovka Dam has allowed Ukraine to strategically re-deploy its reserves from Kherson to where they were actually fighting the Russians.
As retired Colonel Roman Svitan, a military expert and former pilot in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, explained:
“Furthermore, the reserve forces we had positioned on the Kherson front, which were ready to cross the Dnipro River and advance directly towards Armyansk and Crimea, can now be deployed on the Zaporizhzhya, Donetsk, and Luhansk fronts. This will intensify the fighting in those areas,” the expert said.
By blowing up the Kakhovka Dam, the Ukrainians have removed Kherson and Crimea from their list of “to-dos” and are now free to concentrate all of their (dwindling) forces on the main front of their struggling counteroffensive.
Ukraine has an excuse for taking a “time out”
Indeed, the long awaited Ukrainian “counteroffensive” is not going well, and Kiev would like to find something to distract.
Blowing the Kakhovka Dam has given Ukraine the excuse it needs to explain away its lack of any real progress on the counteroffensive. Nikolay Mitrokhin, a military expert from Germany’s Bremen University told Al Jazeera: “Unsurprisingly, Ukraine took a time out in the offensive” when the dam was blown.
A “hail Mary” play to draw the West into the conflict?
It seems that Zelensky had been hoping that such a disaster would prompt direct support and “boots on the ground” from his Western allies.
“We need international organizations, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, to immediately join the rescue operation and help people in the occupied part of Kherson region”, Zelensky Tweeted.
As time went by, and the US and UK and NATO appeared reticent to help — Zelensky ratcheted up his rhetoric:
“When international organizations that are supposed to protect life on a global scale do not have time to organize and send a rescue mission to the occupied territory even in a week… When some world players do not dare to come out even with clear and strong statements that would condemn this new Russian war crime… Terrorists are simply fueled by this weakness of the world, this indifference — it encourages them”, he Tweeted.
Western allies and media refuse to assign blame
One can sense that Zelensky is frustrated at the West’s resistance to assigning blame. So far, the US and UK governments have both refused to blame Russia for the catastrophe.
Indeed, the Western media, usually quick to blame Russia for everything, seem to have been told to “stand down” in this case.
Most outlets, like CNN, are presenting a range of possible explanations, saying equivocal things like:
It’s still impossible to say whether the dam collapsed because it was deliberately targeted or if the breach could have been caused by structural failure.
Some outlets, which ran with the “Russia did it” headline in the hours after the incident, changed their messaging as the day progressed:
The fact that the Western authorities and their minions in the media have so far refused to condemn Russia — when they have not been shy about doing so in the past — might suggest that they know Ukraine did it.
Precedents
We should not be surprised that Ukraine was willing to cause one of the most catastrophic eco-disasters in European history.
Shelling a nuclear plant
The Kakhovka Dam disaster is putting Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in jeopardy and in danger of a meltdown as its cooling water has been drained away.
This is just another way to accomplish the nuclear disaster that Ukraine has wanted for over a year.
The Ukrainians have been trying to cause a Chernobyl sized disaster at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant ever since the Russians took control of it in February 2022.
The Zaporizhzhia NPP is the largest nuclear plant in Europe, with six reactors. Russia made it a priority to capture this facility in the early days of the Special Military Operation, just as it did withe the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant.
This was because they were afraid of what the Ukrainians might do with these facilities. They had a right to be afraid.
The Zaporizhzhia plant, like the Kakhovka plant, quickly became a target for Ukrainian shelling. This has always been clear, and in the beginning, Kiev did not even bother to deny it.
Instead, they tried to claim that the NPP was a legitimate military target.
As CNN explained:
Kyiv has repeatedly accused Russian forces of storing heavy weaponry inside the complex and using it as cover to launch attacks, knowing that Ukraine can’t return fire without risking hitting one of the plant’s six reactors. Moscow, meanwhile, has claimed Ukrainian troops are targeting the site.
It is interesting that the CNN article — in a back-handed way — confirms that the Ukrainians are shelling the plant while “knowing that Ukraine can’t return fire without risking hitting one of the plant’s six reactors”.
Apparently, causing a nuclear meltdown and a Chernobyl-level catastrophe is a risk that Kiev has always been willing to take.
Nord Stream 2
There is still controversy surrounding who is responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Seymour Hersh, of course, has presented highly credible evidence that the United States did it. The US government has now — belatedly — claimed that Ukraine did it.
OF COURSE the U.S. blew up Nord Stream - but it does not really matter.
In either case, the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline shows that the “anti-Russian side” of the current conflict is perfectly willing to perpetrate the most heinous of ecologically disastrous attacks on public infrastructure.
The Nord Stream attack ended up creating the largest emission of methane gas ever recorded. Experts declared, “It’s catastrophic for the climate”.
“Whoever ordered this should be prosecuted for war crimes and go to jail,” said Rob Jackson, a Stanford University climate scientist.
Ukraine blows up an ammonia pipeline — and a grain deal
June 6, 2023, was not just a bad day for the Kakhovka Power Plant.
The previous night, the Ukrainians also blew up the the Togliatti-Odesa pipeline, which once pumped up to 2.5 million tons of ammonia annually for global export to Pivdennyi port on the Black Sea from Togliatti in western Russia.
The Russians reported this, although it was hardly mentioned in the Western press:
Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov said earlier on Wednesday that Ukrainian saboteurs blew up the Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline in the Kharkov Region on the evening of June 5, with civilians hurt in the sabotage attack. “At about 9:00 p.m. Moscow time on June 5, a Ukrainian subversive and reconnaissance group blew up the Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline near the settlement of Masyutovka in the Kharkov Region. Civilians were injured as a result of this terrorist act,” the spokesman said.
The pipeline, the world’s longest to carry ammonia, has been idle since the start of the war in February last year, but was supposed to be restarted as part of the “Black Sea Grain Initiative” brokered by the UN and Turkey and agreed in June 2022.But Ukraine had been balking, stalling and refusing to open up their end of the pipeline for the past year- starving people be damned.
Now, the whole question has been rendered moot, thanks to Ukrainian sabotage.
Depleted uranium munitions
Let us not forget that the West and Ukraine have planned to deploy depleted uranium (DU) munitions to the battlefields of Eastern and Southern Ukraine.
This shows a blatant disregard not just for the environment, but for human life. We know from previous use of DU munitions in Yugoslavia and Iraq that the soil in these areas will become contaminated with radiation, and the people living in these areas will be condemned to generations of cancers, birth defects and other illnesses.
It is obvious, then, that Ukraine and its Western backers have no qualms about causing horrific environmental damage and human suffering.
Why Russia did not do it
Firstly, Russia has control of the Kakhovka Dam. If they wanted to flood the lower Dnieper area, they could do so by opening up the floodgates; they would not need to blow up the structure.
It seems silly to think that Russia would blow up the dam when they did not need to, especially after they had been warning about Ukraine’s intention to blow it since 2022.
Secondly, the areas primarily affected by the disaster — and the people living there — now belong to Russia.
In fact, Putin announced the official annexation of these areas (in addition to Crimea, which was annexed in 2014), in a ceremony in September 2022:
At the ceremony on Friday, Putin said Russia has “four new regions”, calling the residents of Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions “our citizens forever”.
“We will defend our land with all our strength and all our means,” he added, calling on “the Kyiv regime to immediately cease hostilities and return to the negotiation table”.
Why would Russia hurt “their citizens” and destroy “their land”?
Moreover, as described above, Russia has invested trillions of Rubles in Crimea, and went to great lengths to restore the water and power to the peninsula. The Kakhovka disaster is reversing all the progress Russia has made there over the past 9 years.
Since withdrawing from Kherson last fall, Russia has spent 8 months building extensive fortifications and defensive positions on the eastern (lower) bank of the Dnieper. As described above, all those fortifications were wiped out by the flood.
Russia likewise has no interest in creating a potential nuclear disaster at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is also on Russian territory and protected by Russian troops.
In short, we cannot be constantly expected to believe that the “crazy Russians” are so intent on destroying their own land, their own infrastructure, and their own people.
Part 6: Conclusions
The Ukrainians undoubtedly blew up the Kakhovka Dam for the following reasons:
The current Kiev regime is 100% anti-Russian — not just against the Russian state, but against the Russian people, including their history and culture. For Kiev — as well as for their Neocon backers in the West — the purpose of the current conflict in Ukraine is to “kill Russians”.
Indeed, Kiev launched a genocidal war against the ethnic Russians in the Donbas in 2014, targeting civilians for extermination, a practice which continues even today.
Ukrainians know that Putin considers Southern and Eastern Ukraine, including Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea, to be “part of Russia”, and the people living in these territories are — and have always been — Russian.
The Kiev regime and the West want to kill Russians and destroy Russia. The Kakhovka Dam burst is a humanitarian disaster that will destroy what is now Russian territory (Kherson and Crimea) and ruin “Russian” lives, turning a now Russian “breadbasket” into a desert and saddling the Russian Federation with trillions of Rubles in costs for reconstruction and environmental remediation for many years to come. These are all good things for Kiev and its Western backers.
Moreover, the dam disaster has yielded several military advantages to Ukraine, allowing them to redeploy troops to consolidate and reinforce their counteroffensive in the Zaporizhzhia region. It has also swept away the massive defensive fortifications that Russia had built on the lower bank of the Dnieper river.
The disaster also places the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in jeopardy — something the Ukrainian forces have been trying to do since the Russians captured the facility last year.
Ukraine and the West have a complete disregard for the ecology, the land, and human life — especially when it is Russian land and Russian lives that suffer.
Great article! It gets very tiring hearing the same "Russia blew up its own..." refrain over and over again from Western propagandists masquerading as mainstream journalists. History isn't going to be kind to these idiots who staged a coup in 2014 and then started a war in 2022 just to steal Russian assets and resources while proudly declaring their Nazi allegiances. Not kind at all.