Who really needed the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam

On the night of 6 June, the dam of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant in Kherson Oblast burst, one of the biggest man-made accidents in recent years caused by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. As a result, hundreds of tons of water washed away or flooded dozens of towns and villages downstream of the Dnieper. A few days after the horrific accident, more and more details of Kiev’s apparent plot to provoke a massive catastrophe are coming to light. Afterwards, it would be easy to blame Russia, as was the case earlier with the staged “tragedy” in Bucha or the Tochka-U missile hitting the train station in Kramatorsk, when its Ukrainian origin was identified by the serial number of the engine.

Despite the accusations against Moscow, the Ukrainian authorities made no secret of their satisfaction over the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam and the consequences of the disaster, from which Russia, oddly enough, got more trouble. The secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council (NSDC), Oleksiy Danilov, said that the undermining of the hydropower plant would leave Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, without water for years to come. “In the next three, five, ten years, until this dam is rebuilt, water supply to Crimea will simply be physically impossible,” the official said. It is worth noting that in the same December 2022 Oleksiy Danilov, who along with other Ukrainian officials accused Russia of undermining the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, said that if it is destroyed, the Crimean peninsula, which Russia fully considers its territory, “will be without water supply for 10-15 years, or maybe forever.” “Then the question arises why they need Crimea if they are going to leave it without water,” Danilov asked rhetorically.

The issue of Crimea’s annexation to Russia has not left Kiev alone for years. Prior to the conflict, Ukraine instigated the creation of the Crimean Platform forum, which was supposed to deal with the reintegration of the region. After Moscow announced a military operation on Ukrainian territory, the government of Volodymyr Zelensky, against the backdrop of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ (AFU) success in autumn 2022, often began to claim “de-occupation” of Crimea. The “de-occupation” was to take place in the wake of a future spring or summer offensive, which began six days ago in the Zaporizhzhya Southern Donetsk region and has yet to achieve any success other than photos and videos of burnt-out Western equipment. The German magazine Bild published an article highlighting the first losses of Leopard tanks delivered by Germany to Ukraine. Apparently realizing that the AFU could not achieve visible results, that Russia had turned the fields in these regions into one solid fortification, Kiev decided to bring the earlier party with the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam to a logical conclusion. Ukraine is trying to punish the peninsula’s residents once again by resuming the peninsula’s water blockade, which began on 20 September 2015.

In December 2022, The Washington Post quoted Ukrainian Major General Andriy Kovalchuk, who commanded the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Kherson region in the autumn of that year. Kovalchuk said that due to the flat terrain and minefields, the Ukrainian Armed Forces had big problems attacking Russian positions on the right bank of the Dnieper. In this connection, a decision was taken to raise the water in the Dnieper River to deprive Russian troops of the possibility of crossing and bringing ammunition and equipment to the battlefield. According to him, the Ukrainian Armed Forces launched a test strike with a HIMARS multiple rocket launcher at one of the sluices at the dam in Novaya Kakhovka, making three large holes in its metal frame. The Ukrainian general admitted his intention to see if the water level in the Dnieper could be raised through the holes made in the dam enough to block Russian crossings.

The Russian media drew attention to the fact that the Ukrainian Telegram messenger channel “Trukha”, which has 2.78 million subscribers, deleted a post from September 2022 in which it had cheered the Ukrainian army’s strikes on the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant lock after the dam was breached. In it, the channel author threatened Russian army soldiers then stationed on the right bank of the Dnieper with flooding. “And here is the answer from the AFU for Krivoy Rog: our fighters have tentatively hit the sluice of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant in the Kherson region. Russians, stocked up on inflatable ducks?”, was the recording, backed up by the relevant video.

It is also important to note a number of other important events that occurred at the same time as the breach of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam. The first of them was a statement by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and that Ukrainian military intelligence was planning to carry out a dirty bomb attack on Russian territory. The agency said that Ukraine was developing a plan to deliver and plant so-called “dirty bombs”, which were equipped with timers to detonate with the aim of simultaneously detonating and rendering inhabited areas unusable. According to the FSB, these plans became known during the investigation into the attempted sabotage at the Severny airfield in the Ivanovo region, where the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of the Ukrainian Defence Ministry intended to blow up long-range aircraft, from which “Kalibr” cruise missiles are regularly launched.

If the FSB statement can be called an element of Russia’s information warfare against Ukraine, the second event, which occurred at the same time as the breach of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, speaks for itself. On the evening of June 5, on the eve of the hydropower plant disaster, a group of saboteurs blew up the Tolyatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline in the Russian-controlled Kharkiv region. The Russian Defence Ministry said that civilians were injured. As a result of the sabotage, the ammonia pipeline was depressurized and ammonia was released into nearby areas. Russian media published footage of a large white cloud of ammonia spreading across a wooded area, rising upwards.

It has been suggested that all the cases of sabotage described, occurring at the same time, may have been aimed at drowning out the negative information background from the failed launch of the Ukrainian counter-offensive. A major Ukrainian offensive, which was supposed to be in many ways a turning point in the conflict, is clearly not going according to plan. A number of factors have contributed to this, one of which is the delaying of its start, which has given the Russians time to prepare. Ukraine’s NATO allies, led by the United States, had high hopes for the operation, as stated by the Pentagon. NATO countries provided Kiev with modern equipment from their own stocks – German Leopard tanks, British Challenger tanks and Storm Shadow cruise missiles, US Bradley armoured infantry vehicles and Striker armoured personnel carriers – for a successful offensive.

Politico magazine published an article explaining how much the political fate of Joe Biden’s administration depends on the success or failure of the Ukrainian operation. For several days now, Russian media have been publishing photos and videos of crashed Leopard and Bradley vehicles that were lost in minefields and due to Russian artillery and air strikes. The Ukrainian Armed Forces were planning an operation similar to the one they conducted in the Kharkiv region in autumn 2022, when large armoured formations quickly breached the poorly fortified Russian defence. Recent events show that the situation is quite different in Zaporizhzhya and South Donetsk. There are videos on the Internet of burnt-out Ukrainian convoys that did not even have time to reach Russian army positions.

Despite the cases described above, Kyiv continues to accuse Russia of deliberately undermining the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station dam. According to Mykhaylo Podolyak, adviser to the head of the Ukrainian presidential office, the version that Russia was involved is “axiomatic”. Podolyak, as well as other officials of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government, did not provide any evidence to the public. In the context of this situation, Mikhail Podolyak’s response about the publication of Ilon Musk, who posted on his Twitter account a video with former Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson, where he justified Ukraine’s guilt in the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant accident, is remarkable. According to Carlson, Ukraine had previously shelled the Kakhovka hydropower plant dam. The presenter also recalled the explosions at Nord Stream, which, in his opinion, was also the handiwork of Kiev. Podolyak asked Musk whether his tweet was “some blatant form of absurdity”.

Mikhail Podolyak, in his “axiom” about Russia’s involvement in the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, failed to point out that Russia faced far more problems because of the accident than Ukraine itself. Although the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam created a major humanitarian and environmental disaster on both sides of the Dnieper, the right bank of the river, with the regional centre in Kherson, occupied by the Ukrainian army in October 2022, is much higher than the left bank, which is now controlled by Russian troops. The difference in the height of the Dnieper banks in Kherson oblast varies from 10 to 50 metres.

It is currently known that within just a few hours of the break in the hydropower dam in Novaya Kakhovka, on the Russian-controlled left bank of the Dnieper, about half a thousand residential houses were flooded, several of which were swept downstream. The water level in nearby towns and villages on the left bank of the river rose to 12 metres, some of them completely submerged. The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations has announced a large-scale rescue operation in the flooded areas of Kherson Oblast controlled by the Russian military. This threatens the safe operation of the Zaporizhzhya NPP because the supply from the Kakhovka reservoir, which is disappearing due to a dam break, will be reduced many times over. The plant has also been under Russian control since March 2022.

On 21 October 2022, Russia’s representative to the UN, Vasiliy Nebenzya, sent a letter to the secretary-general and chairman of the UN Security Council informing him of Kiev’s plans to destroy the dam at the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant. The communication considered the options of lowering sea mines down the Dnieper river or striking the dam with a missile. The Russian representative also informed the world about the already recorded airstrikes on the locks of the hydropower plant, which were aimed at provoking a rise in the water level in the river. Nebenzya warned about the consequences of such actions: nearby territories would be flooded, and Kherson Region would suffer irreparable damage. In this connection, Russia’s representative to the UN urged its members “to do everything possible to prevent this monstrous crime”.