re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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The destruction of the Kakhovka dam and power plant that unleashed floodwater across southern Ukraine is likely to limit Kyiv’s options in its incipient counter-offensive, according to military officials and analysts.

Moscow and Kyiv traded blame on Tuesday for the demise of the dam, which spanned the Dnipro river and is located in Russian-occupied Kherson province.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed it was a “deliberate act of sabotage by the Ukrainian side aimed at depriving Crimea of water” and intended to distract from the “stuttering Ukrainian offensive”.

But Ukrhydroenergo, Ukraine’s state-owned hydropower company, said an explosion inside the engine room had demolished the dam, while President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “Russian terrorists” were at fault.

“It is physically impossible to blow it up somehow from the outside — with shelling. It was mined. It was mined by the Russian occupiers and blown up by them,” he said. “Russia detonated a bomb of mass environmental damage. This is the biggest man-made environmental disaster in Europe in decades.”

Neither claim could be immediately verified.
But some military analysts and Ukrainian officials say the timing of the dam’s destruction is suspicious, as it largely benefits Russia, by scuppering Kyiv’s plans to attack to the south and increasing the likelihood of an eastward offensive that Moscow could focus on. Russian forces have failed to make any significant battlefield advances this year after announcing an offensive in January.

“The purpose is obvious: to create insurmountable obstacles in the way of the advancing Ukrainian armed forces,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Zelenskyy.

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“Russia benefits from the frontline being smaller because it is easier to concentrate forces to prevent a breakthrough,” said Rob Lee, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a US think-tank. “So if a Ukrainian operation in Kherson is less likely now, they might be able to move more forces east.”

A Ukrainian military official speaking on condition of anonymity said officials were assessing the damage caused by the flooding and would adjust their counteroffensive plans accordingly.

“If we had any plans for a landing operation there, we definitely won’t do it anytime soon,” they said. “Immediately after [the flooding], the land will be a marsh, essentially.”

Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a military adviser and former Ukrainian defence minister, said it was likely that Kyiv’s generals “have alternative plans”. The flooding may be a setback, he said, but it won’t stop Ukraine’s counter-offensive.

“If we wanted to cross the river there, it’s not going to happen,” he added. “Basically, it denies any ability for us to cross the river and move equipment in that area. Essentially, that’s why most likely Russia did it, particularly now.”

Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security, a government unit, said it was possible Russian forces blew up the dam to flood islands downstream, which it said had been recaptured by Ukrainian troops on Monday.

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But the flooding affects Russian forces, too. “The destruction of the dam floods the first Russian line of defence east of the Dnipro river in Kherson, though the threat of a Ukrainian river crossing was always low,” said Michael Kofman, a military analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, a Washington-based think-tank. “This disaster benefits nobody, and will affect Russian-occupied territory the most.”

Russia’s military bloggers, who fervently support the war but have criticised the army’s leadership, largely backed the official version of events.

“It’s our left bank that suffers more from the flooding. It doesn’t make sense why we’d do this,” wrote Alexander Kots, a Russian war reporter for pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda.

But some could not help delighting in the difficulties the dam’s collapse created for Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the region.

“I won’t say who blew it up or evaluate it in any way,” said Egor Guzenko, a Russian volunteer fighter and blogger. “But from a tactical point of view, [Ukraine] can forget about an offensive in Kherson.”

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