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Last Fall A Russian Brigade Nearly Blew Up Ukraine’s Dnipro River Dam. Eight Months Later The Russians Finally Pulled The Trigger.

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Today someone breached the Kakhovka Dam on the Dnipro River, 30 miles east of Kherson city in southern Ukraine. The breach sent five billion gallons of water racing west from the Kakhovka Reservoir south of Zaporizhzhia city toward the Black Sea.

Long-drained floodplains reflooded. Tens of thousands of homes were inundated. Wildlife, farm animals, pets and zoo animals drowned or fled to higher ground. Mines that Russian and Ukrainian forces had buried along the Dnipro flowed with the water, heaping an explosive hazard onto the ecological catastrophe.

Russia blamed Ukraine for blowing the 65-year-old dam. Ukraine blamed Russia. The evidence clearly implicates the Russians, however. It apparently had been the plan, all along, for Russian forces to breach the dam in the event Ukrainian forces advanced in southern Ukraine.

The Ukrainian military warned this might happen. “We would like to remind you that the Main Directorate of Intelligence reported on the implementation of major mining works immediately after the capture of the Kakhovka hydroelectric powerplant [in February 2022],” Ukrainian military intelligence stated.

“In April last year, additional mining of locks and supports was carried out,” the intel agency continued. “Tented trucks with explosives were installed on the dam itself.”

The Kremlin’s goal, it seems, was to complicate a Ukrainian attack across the Dnipro, which since last fall has demarcated the front line in the south. Russian officials may not have taken into account the second- and third-order effects, however.

Perhaps most importantly: Russian-occupied Crimea heavily relied on fresh water channeled from the now-drained reservoir. No reservoir means much less water for the occupiers.

When Ukrainian brigades launched a country-wide counteroffensive last fall, routing Russian regiments along a 600-mile front anchored in the west by Kherson city, the Russians came close to blowing the Kakhovka Dam.

“Extreme development of the situation [will result in] undermining the dam,” one Russian source wrote, citing comments from soldiers with the 205th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade, which last fall took part in Russia’s defensive campaign in the south—and which more recently has occupied positions around the Kakhovka Dam.

As it happened, the Russians in late October retreated from Kherson and crossed in fairly good order to the Dnipro’s left bank. The Ukrainians meanwhile halted their advance at the river’s right bank.

The Kremlin at the time opted not to breach the dam—then finally pulled the trigger eight months later amid the general panic stoked by the apparent start of Ukraine’s long-anticipated 2023 counteroffensive.

The breach in essence restores the Dnipro’s floodplain to its pre-1958 state. Over the very long term, that could mean a healthier river ecosystem. In the shorter term, the Dnipro deluge is a disaster for both sides in Russia’s 15-month wider war on Ukraine.

It could be weeks or months before officials in Kyiv and Moscow fully can assess the implications. Yes, the flood could slow Ukrainian operations in and around Kherson. But it might also begin to parch the Russian occupation force in Crimea.

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