Think Russia Bombed the Kakhovka Dam? We've Got a Crimean Bridge to Sell You
Moscow blames Ukraine after ex-general said last year that Kyiv considered blowing up dam to paralyze Moscow’s forces in Kherson
Another day, another convenient Russian sabotage operation for the Ukrainian military.
Videos emerged on social media early Tuesday that showed flood waters pouring over the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine's Kherson region, prompting Ukrainian officials to issue evacuation orders for villages along the Dnipro.
Reuters reported that destroying the dam, which was built in 1956, would “unleash a wall of floodwater across much of the Kherson region.” Both Russia and Ukraine blamed the other for the flooding.
The news outlet reported last year that Moscow ad Kyiv accused each other of planning to blow up the dam.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, said last year that Russian forces put mines on the dam and compared the threat to using weapons of mass destruction.
“We have information that Russians mined the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant,” Zelensky told the European Council in 2022, according to the Kyiv Independent.
Zelensky took to Twitter on Tuesday, “The destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam only confirms for the whole world that they must be expelled from every corner of Ukrainian land. Not a single meter should be left to them, because they use every meter for terror.”
TRENDPOST: If you buy that bullshit, we’ve got a Crimean Bridge to sell you!
The Wall Street Journal noted that the flooding destroyed “one potential path for Ukraine’s planned counteroffensive in the south of the country.”
Ukrainian leaders have been trying to downplay the counteroffensive’s potential as to not set Western expectations too high.
Oleksii Reznikov, the Ukrainian defense Minister, tried to downplay expectations for his country’s upcoming counteroffensive and said expectations seem to be “overestimated in the world.”
He warned against “emotional disappointment” because “most people are … waiting for something huge,” The Washington Post reported.
Indeed, The New York Times noted that if the “Ukrainians fall short of expectations, they risk an erosion of Western support.”
This dam explosion gives Ukraine the option of jettisoning plans for a counteroffensive.
Vladimir Leontyev, the mayor of Novaya Kakhovka, told RT, the Russian outlet, that “several of the dam’s floodgates were damaged and unleashed an uncontrolled stream of water, the underwater structure itself withstood the attack.”
The report noted that Moscow has blamed Ukraine for attack.
The RT report noted that Andrey Kovalchuk, a former head of Ukraine’s Operational Command South, told The Washington Post that Ukrainian forces considered blowing up the dam to paralyze Moscow’s forces in the Russian-controlled city of Kherson.
He reportedly claimed that Ukrainian forces once conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates to “see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages.”
TRENDPOST: Dmitry Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister who has been one of the most outspoken advocates of more weapons and war, was caught in a prank Zoom video in October admitting to being behind attacks on civilian infrastructure in Crimea and Belgorod.