The destruction of the Nova Kakhova Dam is the most significant manmade disaster (absent Covid-19) since the Chernobyl meltdown. It not only provides power to the region directly, but it keeps the water levels high enough to fill the Zaphorizya power plant’s coolant pools and ensures the water supply of southern Ukraine: It is key to the southern economy, including Crimea. Now that it has been destroyed, we can expect a crisis at Zaporizhya—the power plant will need to be shut down. The Russians did this to stop any Ukrainian counteroffensive in the area by flooding potential avenues of attack, in turn freeing Russian troops to reinforce other parts of the front. The resources devoted to handling the humanitarian crisis will also divert resources from the counter-offensive. Here is a map showing the areas damaged—as you can see, it has caused flooding on both the Ukrainian-controlled and Russian-controlled sides. That said, the Ukrainian side is on higher ground, so the flooding on the Russian side will be worse.
Some observations:
1) That Russia took such a desperate measure suggests the counter-attack has them very frightened. We can expect the Russians to move forces out of the South and towards the East. That said, I think Ukraine must have expected this since Zelensky himself talked about the Russians’ having placed explosives around the dam. It is very unlikely that a river crossing with a push toward Crimea was their main plan: The various actions taken by Ukrainian special forces in the Kherson area were likely misdirections. The main purpose of blowing the dam was to free up forces to man other parts of the front and to burden Ukraine with a humanitarian crisis, which will disrupt their offensive efforts. (Plenty of Ukrainian held areas are affected even if the worst flooding is on the left bank of river)
2) If Russia really believed the attack was going to come through Kherson, why didn’t they wait until Ukrainian forces started crossing the river to flood it? After all, this would have turned Ukraine’s forces into sitting ducks. It is likely that a southernly attack would have been proceeded by some sort of military operation to retake the dam and Russia wanted to do what damage they could before losing the opportunity. Russia probably knew the initial attack would not come through the south and that a thrust towards Crimea would only occur in a follow-up attack, much as the Kherson offensive followed the Kharkiv. There were significant fights between Ukrainian special forces and Russian forces to secure bridgeheads and marshy islands along the Dnipro, but I think these were either diversionary operations or reconnaissance in force: Ukraine wanted to test Russia’s defenses and assess the viability of a river crossing. Russia’s control of the dam, which basically allows them to dial in the width of the Dnipro south of it (see below) pretty much ruled out any direct attack against Crimea. (I suppose someone who wants to argue that this was Ukraine could say that Ukraine did this A) to wipe out Russian defenses and B) to prevent Russia from collapsing the dam just after Ukraine crosses; that said, there are other reasons to believe Ukraine could not have done this.)
3) In retrospect, I wonder if Ukraine should have blown the dam themselves back during the Kherson offensive in order to trap Russian forces in the city and destroy them. Of course, the lame-brained moralists would have claimed that "that was wrong" and would never have accepted the argument that Russia would blow the dam themselves the moment it became strategically favorable. In fact, this is exactly what I argued last year: And I was right. For whatever reason, people are giving Russia far too much credit for “basic decency.” That said, Ukraine has to care about PR—which means accepting that people have distorted perceptions: There really are people who think Russia would not have done this and would have argued this till the end of time if Ukraine had blown the damn back in September.
4) The destruction of the dam shows Russia’s willingness to escalate: Not only is it an environmental disaster in its own right, but it risks a nuclear disaster at Zaphoriya. This means we have to give more credence to nuclear threats going forward. (Update 6-30-23: Interestingly, Ryan McBeth claims that the reactor is not currently operating at a capacity where a meltdown is even possible; it is basically operating in its “maintenance mode.” It is operating in the same state that is used to do maintenance on the reactor. Much of reporting on the Zaphoriya reactor is simply media histrionics.)
5) The attack increases the probability of a major crisis at the Zaphorizya Power Plant. That said, apparently the cooling pools are kept full and the plant only occasionally draws from the river to make up for losses. Current estimates give the power plant several months to remedy this situation.
6) This will kill the water supply to Crimea. Crimea has filled its reservoirs, but they face a renewed water crisis in the not-too-distant future. It creates so many long-term problems for Russia that it suggests Russia is pessimistic about its ability to maintain the status quo without taking radical measures. If Russia holds Crimea and the area south of the Dnipro, it may regret this.
7) Any claim that Ukraine destroyed the dam is completely incoherent. Ukraine would not want to impede its own advance or free up Russian forces to defend other avenues of attack: This action favors the defenders, full stop, and Russia is on the defensive at this point in the war. And, if they did plan to attack in the South, then they certainly wouldn’t want to impede their own forces. If Ukraine was going to do this, they would have done it around the time of the Kherson offensive, when it actually favored Ukraine strategically, or during the initial Russian advance. Generally you flood an area to slow down an enemy advance or to trip up a enemy retreat—since this occurred at the beginning of Ukraine’s counter-attack, and does not obstruct any Russian retreat (as Russia is not yet retreating) we obviously know Russia did it. Anyone who believes Ukraine did this lacks an understanding of military affairs. Furthermore, Russia has been carrying out attacks on other Ukrainian dams as part of its effort its attack on Ukrainian infrastructure: There was the Russian missile attack on the Kryvyi Rih dam and the destruction of the Oskil river dam by Russian land forces. It seems unlikely that, after having intentionally targeted dams in the recent past, this would be an accident. Even if there wasn’t an explosion, Russia took some action to effect the dam’s destruction, either allowing the water level to build up too much and/or intentionally differing maintenance. (Interestingly, Russia recently changed its regulations to eliminate the requirement for an investigation in the event that a powerplant on occupied territory, or as z-heads would call them the newly acquired territories, is destroyed in “a terrorist attack.” Why do this unless you were planning to use a accusation of terrorism as cover? Text of Russian Policy on Terrorism on Power Plants in Occupied Territories)
8) For those who remain unconvinced, no one reported hearing the noise of a missile strike: And the mayor of Nova Kakhovka himself said there was no missile attack before changing his tune later—suddenly remembering one. Obviously, the first statement is more credible. The amount of explosive force you would need to hit the damn with to destroy it would require Ukraine to use a large number of its HIMARS: Explosives, however, are much more powerful below the waterline. Remember that dams are designed to handle massive amounts of pressure. Explosives planted below the waterline, explosives Russia would have had a vastly easier time placing, would be much more effective than a missile attack. Nevertheless, this would still require transporting many, many tons of explosives—and Russia collapsed the roadway on the Ukrainian side of the dam. Only Russia would have been able to transport and place the necesary amount of explosive. Lastly, Russia at the end of last year opened the sluices in order to increase the width of the Dnipro downstream, making a crossing more difficult. A few months back, Russia changed course and closed these sluices, raising the water level north of the dam to record highs. It is hard to explain this decision as anything other than an attempt to put the damn under more pressure to aid a demolition and to make any subsequent flooding as damaging as possible: The graph below shows Russia “winding up” for the punch.
9) Once Russia gives up on blaming Ukraine for this, they will defend their actions by citing Ukraine’s destruction of the Irpin River Dam at the beginning of the war. Of course, the flooding resulting from this is far worse than that caused by Ukraine’s actions around Irpin. More importantly, Ukraine was doing this to defend its territory: Russia is doing it to defend their conquests. Still, we can expect Russian propagandists to use the destruction of the Irpin River Dam to muddy the waters.
10) If you look at Britain’s great dam busting raid, Operation Chastise, you can see that special munitions that detonate below the water line are needed to carry off this sort of attack. Yet, Russia has no footage of a Ukrainian bomber carrying such a munition. That is because, of course, Russia blew up the damn. And even Ukraine’s largest drones don’t have the payload capacity to blow up a damn.
11) Blowing up the dam serves defensive purposes on both sides of the dam. West of the dam, it will obviously cause flooding, and once the flooding has subsided, mud. But it will also create impassible mud east of the dam as well. It makes any attack anywhere along the Dnipro more difficult. The fact that this event clearly aids Russia’s defense, and that it happened at the beginning of the counter-offensive, suggests it was deliberate.
11) The single silver lining for Ukraine is that this might make Mykolaiv more accessible to shipping. The flooding will force Russia to withdraw from this area in red on the map below because the flooding will turn it into a difficult to supply island, which means it will be harder for Russia to threaten shipping coming through the Dnipro Estuary.
I highly recommend William Spaniel’s video on the situation:
William Spaniel's Update on the Dam
Binkov’s Battlegrounds Coverage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IB9PfaRx4M&ab_channel=Reuters