Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to bring down a Ukrainian dam that collapsed earlier this month while under Russian control, according to exclusive drone photos and information obtained by The Associated Press.

submitted by ActuallyNot from (abc.net.au)

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[–]weavilsatemyface 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Drone photos show that Russia has a motive to blow the dam? O Rly?

From the article (you have to read more than halfway down the page): "The car bomb itself would not have been enough to bring down the dam."

So we have a photo that the West Ukrainians provided, showing a car with the roof partially cut off, that they just claim is a car bomb, that they admit couldn't have blown up the dam... and we're supposed to believe that it blew up the dam???

How would a car bomb with the roof cut off, so most of the explosive force would be channelled upwards away from the dam, have taken down the dam? Why wouldn't the Russians use more professional demolition equipment?

Why blow it up at all?

If Russia wanted to flood their own defenses, they could have just opened the flood gates. More importantly, with a hole in the dam wall, they have lost control of the dam. Otherwise they could control the amount of water they allow out, as much or as little as they need, and use it to frustrate any attempted Ukrainian amphibious crossing.

Why would Russia blow up the dam? It works against them in so many ways:

  • Almost all of the flood zone is in Russian-held territory.
  • Blowing the dam severely undercuts one of Russia's non-negotiable war aims: to secure access to water for Crimea.
  • Its cuts water off from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is under Russian control.
  • As Putin said, Russia was hoping for the Ukrainians to attempt a river crossing at Kherson. They were ready and waiting for them.
  • But the flood swept away Russia's mine fields and flooded their trenches. If and when Ukraine stops letting water through from up-stream dams, and the ground dries, it will be much easier for Ukraine to make an attack there at Kherson.
  • In the meantime, it frees up Ukrainian troops to join the counter-offensive in other areas.
  • Whatever minimal annoyance the flood was to the Ukrainians, it hurts Russia a hundred times worse.

In November 2022 Ukraine made a practice attack on the dam to see if they could flood the occupied Kherson territory. The test was a success, severely damaging the dam and forcing Russian troops to evacuate. Just a month ago, Ukrainian media was calling for the dam to be destroyed. Now Ukraine says "we couldn't have done it, we don't have the firepower!" and are blaming the Russians for flooding their own defenses. They must think we're stupid.

  • Who threatened to blow the dam? Ukraine.
  • Who made a successful practice attack on the dam last year? Ukraine.
  • Who benefits from blowing the dam? Ukraine.
  • So who blew the dam? Obviously it must have been Russia. 🙄

[–]ActuallyNot[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Drone photos show that Russia has a motive to blow the dam? O Rly?

The drone photos show that Russia had the means, motive and opportunity.

The motive wasn't in question. It was to slow Ukraine's advance. Although the destruction of infrastructure and lives is also in keeping with their MO. Rescuers have been shot at by Russian snipers, so the loss of life is also part of their goals.

Now Ukraine says "we couldn't have done it, we don't have the firepower!"

The size of the explosion was greater than you could get with a strike. The consensus is that the explosives were set within that dam.

Who threatened to blow the dam? Ukraine.

Nope. You should read the whole article: https://24tv.ua/ru/mogut-li-rossijane-vzorvat-dambu-kahovskoj-gjes_n2298553

(Here's the google translation). Note that the headline is more correctly translated "The dam of the Kakhovskaya HPP has a strategic significance for Russia: can they blow it up?"

They are speculating (incorrectly, as it turns out) that the Russians won't blow it up.

Who made a successful practice attack on the dam last year? Ukraine.

On the floodgates. In this case the dam wall was destroyed.

Who benefits from blowing the dam?

Not Ukraine. It's their infrastructure. The loss of the land and power generation will take decades to recover from.

Russia gets to slow the Ukrainian advance, and they get to punish Ukraine.

So who blew the dam? Obviously it must have been Russia. 🙄

They were in control of it. And the explosives were set on the inside.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The drone photos show that Russia had the means, motive and opportunity.

Even if we believe that the photos are authentic, they don't show much. A mysterious roofless car that may or may not be a car bomb. That raises more questions than it solves:

  • Why on earth is the Russian army using an IED? Are we back to the idiotic Ukrainian propaganda that "Russia is running out of equipment, weapons and ammunition"?
  • How is a car bomb on the top of the dam wall supposed to breach the dam? The worst it will do is maybe put a small crater in the road surface.

The consensus is that the explosives were set within that dam.

And the drone photo shows inside the dam wall and shows those explosives, does it? 🙄

So in other words, even if you are right that the Russians blew the dam, the drone photos are not evidence of this. The drone photos prove literally nothing either way. The Ukrainians could have taken a photo of Zelensky mooning in the direction of Moscow and labelled it "proof that Putler blew the dam!" and it would have been just as good evidence, and the Slava Ukraini types would have swallowed it.

There is no consensus on the cause of the failure. None of the alternatives can be definitely taken off the table. Even the American propaganda outlet CNN has to admit that there are three alternatives.

My guestimate is: 10% chance that Russia did it, 30% chance of structural failure that took everybody by surprise, 60% that Ukraine/NATO did it. As more evidence comes in, I reserve the right to change those percentages.

We already knew that Russia has the means to blow the dam. They have bombs, missiles and explosives coming out of the wazoo. (Wait, didn't they run out of munitions in March 2022?) If they wanted to blow the dam, they didn't need to use a jerry-built IED car bomb. And we knew they had the opportunity -- they were in control of the dam, right up to the moment that it was blown and they lost control. We don't need drone photos of dubious provenance to tell us what we already know.

What the drone photos cannot possibly show is that they had motive to blow the dam, because motive relates to the inner thought processes of the Russian military. Even if Russia did blow it (dubious), even if the photos caught them in the act, it wouldn't give us their motive.

And that's the thing. There is no motive that makes sense for the Russians to have done this. Any advantage they get is overwhelmed a thousand times by the disadvantages. So we're back to the NATO/Ukrainian propaganda that Russians are drooling morons prone to shooting themselves in the foot in the worst possible way, doing the worst thing possible at the worst time possible, defeating their own strategic and tactical aims at every moment.

NATO and especially the US has a habit of making those sorts of accusations, and westerners fall for them every time. They know that their audience is primed to view the current Enemy du jour in the most unthinking, prejudiced and biased way possible. Everyone we hate is simultaneously an unstoppable, implacable foe and a stupid, weak, easily defeated enemy -- Russia is days away from collapse, and if we don't stop them in Ukraine they will roll over all of Europe like the next Hitler. 🙄

Who benefits from blowing the dam?

Not Ukraine. It's their infrastructure.

Ukraine had already lost the land and power generation. De facto if not de jure this was Russian infrastructure, not Ukraine. Possession is nine tenths of the law, and Ukraine's ability to retake that area was negligible -- and even if they did, they would likely be faced with an insurrection/civil war like in Donbas.

So blowing the dam causes Ukraine to lose nothing. If Russia really wanted to hurt them, they would have blown a Ukrainian dam further upstream, in Ukrainian territory. Blowing it in Russian territory was counter-productive for Russia.

They were in control of it. And the explosives were set on the inside.

Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. An internal explosion seems like the most likely cause, but not the only possible cause, and in either case an internal explosion is exactly what Storm Shadow cruise missiles are designed to cause.

The loss of the land and power generation will take decades to recover from.

Once the Ukrainians close the upstream sluice gates, it will take a few weeks for the land to drain, not "decades". Rebuilding the dam will be costly and time consuming, but assuming Ukraine wins and has control of upstream, it can be done. And if they don't win, they have denied Russia control of the river, the land, and the power generation. Ukraine can prevent Russia from rebuilding the dam simply by leaving the sluice gates open upstream, as they are doing now.

If you ignore the humanitarian cost, the environmental damage, and the fact that this might be a war crime, it was a brilliant move by the Ukrainians, a tactical, strategic and political win -- and double so if they succeed in gas-lighting the world (or at least the EU and Anglosphere) that Russia did it.

Russia gets to slow the Ukrainian advance,

Oh please! Let's talk reality. There was no Ukrainian advance at Kherson, although the Russians were wishing for one.

Tactically, the Russians would have loved Ukraine to attempt a crossing of the Dnipro downstream of the dam. So long as Russia controlled the dam and could release a controlled surge of water, any Ukrainian amphibious assault would have been suicidal. That's gone now -- now only Ukraine has the power to send surges down the Dnipro, and can use that if Russia attempts an amphibious assault on Kherson city.

Had any Ukrainians managed to cross the river, they would have been faced with dug-in Russian troops in heavily defended positions and minefilds. All gone now, washed away. And they can't be rebuilt until Ukraine chooses to slow the flow of water from the dams they, not Russia, control.

and they get to punish Ukraine.

Pure propaganda. That's Ukrainian thinking in this war, not Russian. Russia has been amazingly restrained when dealing with civilians so far, compared to what they could have done.

  • No retaliation for Ukrainian "double-tap" attacks on civilian targets in Donbas. (Bomb a target, then bomb the ambulances and rescuers that come to treat the wounded. A nasty tactic much beloved by the US in Afghanistan.)
  • No "tooth for a tooth" retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on Donbas civilians with petal mines.
  • Or Ukrainian terrorist attacks in Russia.
  • 50% of Ukraine's energy infrastructure left when Russia could have destroyed 90% or 100%.
  • No mass bombing of civilians.
  • No first use of DU munitions by Russia.
  • Relatively little civilian collateral damage for a modern war.

So far, West Ukraine has come out of this with much less damage than NATO victims like Libya, Yugoslavia or Iraq. If Putin gets replaced with one of the Russian hawks, that could change.

I'm not saying Putin is a soft and fluffy kitten. When there is strategic advantage to be gained, he is ruthless. See Bakhmod or Mariupol where Russia didn't hesitate to smash the cities, or at least the parts under Ukrainian control. (But note that Mariupol has already had most of the damage rebuilt.) But he doesn't smash things for no reason. Putin intends to take and hold all of the Kherson oblast, blowing the dam and flooding it gives him nothing but headaches.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

We know Ukraine had means, motive and opportunity:

Means and opportunity: Ukraine is not entirely out of munitions yet, they could have used a Storm Shadow missile with a bunker buster warhead; or they could have used a mini-sub to plant explosives; or (least plausibly) they could have floated bombs down from upstream, and detonated them when they reached the dam. Last year, the Ukrainian military made a practice attack on the dam for the express purpose of seeing whether they could breach the dam, and concluded that they could -- and that was before they had access to Storm Shadows. Their capabilities have only gone up since last year's successful experiment. The only thing that goes against the Storm Shadow hypothesis is that if that's what happened, shouldn't there be video footage? Maybe, maybe not. If Russia had video of the missile attack, wouldn't they have released it by now? Maybe, maybe not.

Motive: the dam failure washed away a significant section of Russia's defences. That hurts Russia's defences (duh) and helps Ukraine. A few Ukrainian soldiers got their feet wet. Russia had to evacuate a major proportion of their forces when their trenches and positions got drowned.

One of the critical, non-negotiable motives for Russia's special military operation was to restore Crimea's water supply, which has been cut off by Ukraine since 2014. Taking control of the dam allowed Russia to restore that water supply. Blowing the dam takes it away again, and makes it much, much harder for Russia to secure a supply of water for Crimea.

The flood mostly affects the Russian side. Look at the map in the CNN article, it shows that the Russian-held territory has been disproportionarally affected. Very little of the west bank of the river has been flooded, while a large chunk of the east bank is under water. So here is territory with an ethnic Russian majority, that Russia controls and is planning to annex, that according to a referendum earlier in the war the majority of people want to become part of Russia. They are literally Ukraine's enemy and Russia's ally -- and yet according to Ukraine, it was Russia that blew the dam to flood them. If anyone blew the dam to "punish" someone, that would have been Ukraine.

Most importantly, the dam failure takes away Russia's ability to control the rate of rater released from the dam, which they could have used in the event of a Ukrainian attempted crossing. Open the gates and send down a surge of water, then close the gates again. Blowing the dam means that Russia has lost the ability to do this, and instead puts control into the hands of the Ukrainians controlling upstream dams. Now it is Ukraine, not Russia, who can shut their gates to stop the flooding, and open them again to send a surge of water against any amphibious attack from the enemy.