Global Courant
If the Russians wanted to blow up the Kakhovka Dam, they would have had to move tons of explosives using boats or underwater equipment, place explosives on the dam opposite the reservoir and cause a massive explosion. From the video posted by the Ukrainian government, it appears that the explosions occurred below the waterline.
The Kakhovka Hydroelectric Dam before the blast
The Kakhovka dam is a hydroelectric power station. During operation, it provided 357 MW of power and cooling water for the 5.7 gigawatt Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. It also supplied water for agriculture in southern Ukraine and northern Crimea.
When the bridge over the Crimean Kerch Strait was blown up, there was a truck that exploded on the bridge and an attempt to blow up the supporting piers of the bridge with a submersible vehicle. The bridge’s main pier did not fall, meaning that the explosive power of the underwater explosion was not enough to get the job done. The bridge was not bombed by planes, glide bombs or missiles.
There are few if any weapons that can break the dam. In addition, a large bomb is unlikely to cause the kind of damage we see on video.
It should be noted that in May and June were the Ukrainians firing rockets and artillery shells at the dam. It is claimed that these attacks caused some cracks in the dam.
Zelensky may have betrayed the dam game when he said it was an inside job. He meant with the Russians – and there is indeed a precedent: Stalin’s forces bombed what was then the third largest dam in the world in the same river in 1941 to try to slow down the German advance through Ukraine.
Does history repeat itself? The Soviet Union suppressed information about events in Zaporizhia, after the dynamiting of DniproHES on August 18, 1941 – the largest hydroelectric power station on the Dnieper River. The strategically important dam and factory was blown up by retreating Red Army troops in 1941 after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. More than 20 tons of explosives were used for this. As a result, according to various sources, about 100,000 people were killed, mostly civilians from neighboring towns and cities. The Soviet army also fell victim to that operation. In addition, the blast paralyzed the work of the city’s industrial enterprises. Photo: Censor.net/en/ / Channel 5
But it’s hard to see what the Russians expected to win this time. And it is noteworthy that one of the first reports to emerge from the explosion of the Kakhovka dam is that the Ukrainians sent dozens of boats to pick up personnel from islands downstream of the dam, which were flooded.
Organizing such a rescue so quickly suggests that these relief supplies were prepared and ready for action – and indeed they were Ukrainians say they had prepared for such an eventuality.
Who had the motive?
Motive can be attributed to the Ukrainians: to blow up the dam to lower the water level upstream and enable them to cross the river there more easily in their offensive operations. Indeed, most of the water in Kherson province ended up on the Russian side, so the Ukrainians protected their flank and the city of Kherson.
This is in line with reports that the Ukrainians wanted to transfer units from the Kherson area to the east because their offensive failed.
The Russians say they did not blow up the dam and had no reason to.
They know that building the dam could cause serious problems for the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which needs large amounts of cooling water. This power plant is the largest in Europe and is under Russian control. It is still not clear whether the plant is still safe.
The dam breach also threatened Russian defenses in areas they control near the river below the dam, territory Ukraine is trying to retake.
The Russian news source Sputnik Global has a long article in the form of a fact checksaying that the dam had been hit by the Ukrainians.
No doubt the Russians felt compelled to push back when the Western press swallowed Zelensky’s claim that Russia did it and ran the claim on virtually all telegraph services and major newspapers. After the first series of articles blaming Russia, newspapers like the New York Post say that Putin is trying to destroy Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant:
‘Mad’ ‘terrorist’ Putin turns plant into improvised nuclear bomb, ex-serviceman warns
New York mail
It is difficult to see how the dam explosion benefits Russia.
It is true that Ukrainian soldiers had to leave on the small islands in the river, but when the water recedes they will come back.
The only seemingly unexpected result is that it was the top part of the dam that was destroyed. The bottom portion is still in place, meaning not all of the water in the reservoir will escape behind the dam and cause more flooding. It is possible that it was planned that way, but detonating tons of explosives is not a good way to test such a technical hypothesis.
A panoramic view of the dam and reservoir behind it before the blast
On the one hand, there may still be enough water to care for the nuclear power plant, and most of the Russian fortifications probably survived. The Russians have not said otherwise.
It’s going to take time to get a full set of accounts, if we ever get one. We still don’t have one for the Nord Stream pipeline or for the Kerch Strait Bridge in Crimea.
If the idea behind this was to cause a major nuclear accident that could be blamed on the Russians, then it is an outrageous act that threatens Ukraine and Europe, perhaps the world.
If it was Ukraine that did it, did they act alone or did they get permission from the outside? If it were Russia, someone had better come up with arguments to support that statement.
Stephen Bryen is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and the Yorktown Institute. This article was originally published about his substack, weapons and strategy. Global Courant republishes it with permission.
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