Global Courant
On the morning of June 6, 2023, thousands of Ukrainians woke up to the sound of running water after a explosion at the Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper River.
Initial, there were questions about how the dam collapsed or who was to blame, but mounting evidence indicates that the dam was deliberately violated by Russia.
I think, as a career officer of the United States Special Forces, the simplest answer is usually correct and provides the most likely explanation for the dam’s destruction. I believe Russia deliberately destroyed the dam to defend against the Ukrainian counter-offensive it thought was imminent.
As expected, the flooded river has arisen an insurmountable obstacle in southern Ukraine, allowing Russia to move soldiers from Kherson – where the damage is most acute – to other areas to support their defenses.
It also made one huge humanitarian crisis that Ukrainian military officials must solve while simultaneously planning and executing counter-offensives to drive Russian troops out of their country.
An ancient military strategy
Known as hydraulic warfare, deliberately flooding an area during combat is nothing new. On the contrary, it is an effective defense technique that is hundreds, if not thousands, of years old.
From 1584 to 1586, for example Dutch rebels destroyed sea walls to flood low-lying areas to prevent Spanish invaders from advancing during the war Eighty Years’ War. In another case, the Chinese soldiers breached dikes along the Yellow River in 1938 to slow down the Japanese advance.
In yet another example, in 1941, Russian secret police blew up the hydroelectric dam on the Dnieper River in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, to slow the Nazi advance.
How Ukraine has used the same tactics
In the current war against Russia, the Ukrainian army has also used hydraulic warfare to (successfully) defend the capital Kiev.
In the opening days of the war in February 2022, Ukrainians have broken a dam on the Irpin River – after other methods of controlled flooding failed – to impede the large, mechanized Russian formations are advancing on Kiev from Belarus.
The Ukrainians too deliberately flooded the rivers Zdvyzh and Teteriv to make them priceless and strengthen their defenses of Kiev.
Those floods played a crucial role in the main battle from the war until now.
There is nothing inherently inhumane about hydraulic warfare, but if used it must meet the demands of military necessity and proportionality as prescribed by international humanitarian law.
This is where the destruction of the Kakhovka dam by the Russians differs from the dam destructions by the Ukrainians.
In my opinion, the Ukrainians made a calculated breakthrough that minimized damage to the dam and caused the necessary flooding of the Zdvyzh and Teteriv rivers to create an appropriate obstacle.
Irpin dam destruction was quite limited: 50 of the 750 houses of the small village of Demydiv were destroyed. More importantly, few have expressed concern about the long-term ecological consequences of this military act.
Flood downstream of the dem breach. Photo: Wikipedia
While it is still too early to say the full impact of the Dnieper flooding, it is expected to be much greater than the Ukrainian breach of the Irpin – with some military observers questions the ethics of this destructive act.
More than 17,000 people have been affected in the flood zone, and that number could be more than 40,000. There is also a threat of it floating landmines and a constant challenge to provide drinking water for thousands.
How the Flood Supports Russia’s Defense
After Russia’s months-long offensive culminated in little more than the capture of the small city of Bakhmut, Russia has now switched to a defensive stance to prevent Ukraine’s long-awaited counter-offensive.
In such an attitude, the Russian defense has some advantages.
Defenders fight from fortified positions, while attackers must advance from exposed, vulnerable positions while overcoming obstacles such as flooded streets.
As such, it is a generally accepted rule of thumb that attacking troops use a 3-to-1 power ratio to defeat a dug-in defender. In other words, for every 100 defenders, attackers need at least 300 soldiers.
But the transgression has its own advantages.
The attacker can choose when and where to launch the attack and thus mass forces at the point of attack to achieve this necessary force ratio.
The defender, on the other hand, must spread his troops across the battlefield if he cannot correctly anticipate the point of attack.
The attacker does not want to point their hand at where and when the attack will take place and will often use deceit to confuse the enemy about where the attack will take place.
Often, attackers will also launch probing attacks to assess where enemy defenses are weakest and fine-tune the location for the main attack.
This is probably what played out in the weeks leading up to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s announcement of “counteroffensive actionson June 12.
Russia still has an advantage when it comes to troop strength, but the advantage is not as overwhelming as it was at the beginning of the war.
A natural defense
Even with larger numbers, I believe the Russians will not be able to concentrate their forces all along the defense line. In my opinion, they also failed to correctly anticipate the location of Ukraine’s main counter-offensive.
As a result, the deliberate flooding of the Dnieper River removes Kherson Oblast as a likely counter-attack site and allows Russia to move soldiers defending there to Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts – locations where Ukraine’s main assault is likely to take place.
Blowing up the dam was thus a calculated and militarily prudent defensive strategy – even if questionable from the perspective of international humanitarian law.
It also created a humanitarian crisis that Russia no doubt foresaw, and has further exploited its tactical advantage. Dealing with massive human or man-made disasters is hard enough for any country, let alone one fighting for its survival.
Since the Kakhovka dam breach, Ukraine has seen an influx of new aid workers and tens of thousands of people who have lost their homes, both major distractions from the major counter-offensive.
To make it even more challenging, Russia continued to shell the flooded areas to make rescue attempts all the more difficult. The war will likely continue for many months or years, but the ecological devastation from this most recent man-made flood is likely to last much longer.
Over a year later, the Irpin River remains flooded, and some homes and farmland have been destroyed or remain unusable. Unfortunately, the flooding of the Dnieper River is likely to be more devastating and last much longer.
Liam Collins is the founder and director of the Modern War Institute at the United States Military Academy West Point.
This article has been republished from The conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Read: Maybe the Ukrainians blew up the Khakovka dam.
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