The Ukrainians deny that they blew up the Kakhovka dam and accuse Russia of being a “terrorist state” and that the Russians did it.
Perhaps, however, the dam was blown up because after all things on the fronts are not going well at all (or at least without any tangible results) for the Ukrainians, where brigades are turned into shapeless masses of scrap metal and hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers lie dead or badly wounded, as they also show related videos.
A blow up of the dam by the… Russians offers no profit to Moscow since it leaves Crimea without water for many years! But it can offer the Ukrainians a more “passable” war front.
On the Volendar and Bakhmut fronts the reports are not good at all for the Ukrainian counterattack.
In Volendar the losses of the Ukrainians have increased. They have lost about 16 tanks, 26 armored vehicles and 14 vehicles! In manpower, the losses of the Ukrainians exceed 2,000 dead and wounded!
Some positions that the Ukrainians had occupied in Novodononetsk were forced to abandon them a while ago.
At Bakhmut, the Ukrainians attempted to penetrate Solentar but were repulsed by the Russians. Fighting in Berkovka continues to the west of Bakhmut and the village is only half captured by the Ukrainians, while the Russians have set up new defense lines.
In the first days it was natural for the Ukrainians to attack with momentum, but if they do not achieve something more tangible, the next few days may turn into a kind of “Ardennes” for them.
The detonation took place after a very difficult night for the Ukrainians where 6 Russian Tu-95s launched 35 Kh-101/555 cruise missiles against Ukrainian targets on the 5 fronts where the infamous Ukrainian counterattack took place.
However, the dam, as the Russians claim, has not been completely destroyed. This means that if they did it themselves they would have done a much better job…
Tactically, the only ones who gain from blowing up the dam are the Ukrainians, who thus destroy all the Russian defensive positions at great depth from the Dnieper bank.
It remains to be seen whether the Russians have created alternative and complementary lines of defense near Crimea to withstand a general Ukrainian counterattack in the now vulnerable sector.
Serious problems are also caused in the water supply of the large Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Ri, a total of 600,000 inhabitants.
For its part, the Ukrainian military accused Russia in a statement of organizing an explosion at the dam. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has urgently convened the Ukrainian Security Council, the head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, Andriy Yermak, announced via Telegram, denouncing a “war crime”.
A rise in the water level was observed in communities near the dam, but the situation was not critical, according to the Russian administration of the Kherson region.
The water level around the dam has risen by five meters and several islands in the river have disappeared under water, state news agency RIA reported, saying 14 settlements in Kherson were at risk of flooding and 22,000 people living in them, according to international agencies and the Athens News Agency.
Ukrainian forces carried out “multiple strikes” on the Kakhovka dam last night, the mayor of the city of Nova Kakhovka, Vladimir Leonidev, wrote on the Telegram app, adding that the dam’s valves were destroyed and an “uncontrollable jet of water” was caused.
The dam was created on the Dnieper River in 1956, during the Soviet period, and is made partly of concrete and earth.
It is one of the largest infrastructures of this type in Ukraine. The extent of the damage will be known in the coming days and above all what “cracks” exist in the Russian defense arrangement.
