Major news broke that the Nova Khakovka dam has been completely destroyed. This is the central, extremely important dam that was critical to the whole Kherson situation last year. It was the sole reason Russia retreated, as the threat of destroying the dam kept their troops on the right/western bank of the Dnieper river highly vulnerable.
Footage has just released confirming the catastrophic destruction:
Here were some of the previously forecasted consequences of such a break happening. Projected flooding of the river plains in Kherson region:
Now population centers are already being reported as flooding and mass evacuation orders being given.
No one knows who destroyed it: Ukrainian analysts are saying Russia did it while Russians say it was the Ukrainians. However, the destruction did appear to come not long after a new wave of Russian cruise missile attacks launched by 6 Tu-95 bombers. Could Russia have destroyed the dam just as Ukraine began to kick off its large offensive, particularly since, as I wrote earlier, there were reports that Ukraine was trying to actualize a river crossing there?
It’s undecided who benefits and to whom it’s a detriment, as some believe that all Russian defenses on the eastern bank will be wiped away by the flood. However, the expanded river boundaries and elevated water levels would preclude Ukrainian crossing attempts, so it clearly seems to favor Russia there. We’ll have to wait and see how it develops as this is just breaking now, no pun intended.
Ultimately, it’s probably impossible to fully model exactly what the damage will be, so we’ll have to simply wait and see how it unfolds before we can make much of an analysis, as right now everyone is just shooting from the hip and none of us are dam and flooding experts.
Update: Strange footage of mortars arriving at the dam after it had already broke. Recall that Russia is said to have controlled the dam, so any shots arriving at the dam would be from AFU’s side as Russia would not shell itself:
Notice that you don't hear any tell-tale characteristic whistling sound of artillery or mortar coming in, nor do you see anything drop. My suspicion is that these could be naval sea mines traveling down river and exploding when they hit the shore. Last year, this was the chief method by which Ukraine had planned to blow the Kakhovka dam. It was written about widely and they already had forward men stationed with cars carrying naval mines that they planned to drop into the Dnieper river upstream so that the mines would hit the dam and destroy it. This was the main reason Russian troops withdrew from Kherson after this threat and I even reported on it elsewhere last year, particularly about how Russia could defend against this with mine catching trawl/nets, etc.
I could be wrong but judging by those new videos it seems a possibility that Ukraine finally enacted the plan and sent mines down river to blow the dam and some of them are still exploding. We’ll have to wait for more footage to be sure, but it’s a possibility to me.
Nova Kakhova Dam Breach - Updated (12:15 UTC)
It was either that or structural damage from previous strikes.
Geoff Brumfiel @gbrumfiel - 6:31 UTC · Jun 6, 2023The dam was already under enormous strain and damaged.
Then things got worse. On 2 June, it looks like a road over the dam failed. That could be indicative of a larger structural failure.
...
In consequence the huge reservoir behind the dam is now flooding lower level land south of Kherson (Xepcoh). The pictures show the before and after of potential flooding due to the breach:
Previously the Russian army had pulled back its troops from the northern part of Kherson oblast because a dam breach would endanger their supply route.
We do not know yet how much of the dam has been damaged. How much water will be flowing out of it depends on the part of the wall that is still standing below the current water level.
Of note is that the Ukraine had previously filled the upstream dams on the Dnieper to the brim to increase the potential damage. Those waters were released in early May. Notice the date of the following tweet.
In a report about last years Kherson counteroffensive the Washington Post reported of Ukrainian plans and attempts to blow up the dam:
[Maj. Gen. Andriy] Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages.The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort. He held off.
Quoting the WaPo piece Andrew Korybko points to a possible motive for today's demolishing of the dam:
[Kovalchuk's] remark about how “the step remained a last resort” is pertinent to recall at present considering that the first phase of Kiev’s NATO-backed counteroffensive completely failed on Monday according to the Russian Ministry of Defense. Just like Ukraine launched its proxy invasion of Russia in late May to distract from its loss in the Battle of Artyomovsk, so too might does it seem to have gone through with Kovalchuk’s planned war crime to distract from this most recent embarrassment as well.
The most recent embarrassment was the failure of yesterday's attack near Novodarovka and Levadnoye. As the Russian Ministry of Defense noted in a special statement:
As a result of active and self-sacrificing actions of the Vostok Group of Forces, which displayed courage and heroism, the enemy has been stopped, and the set tasks haven’t been achieved. The AFU formations and military units suffered significant losses.Total AFU losses in South Donetsk direction were over 1,500 Ukrainian servicemen, 28 tanks, including FRG-manufactured 8 Leopard tanks, three French-manufactured AMX-10 wheeled tanks, and 109 armoured fighting vehicles.
The destruction of the dam is certainly not to Russia's favor. As the 'western' aligned Moscow Times noted six months ago (link corrected):
In a catastrophic scenario, destroying the dam could send a highly destructive flood wave down the Dnipro River, causing severe flooding in large areas of southern Ukraine. Backswell would also likely flood the Inhulets River, a tributary of the Dnipro.However, terrain levels mean the flooding would likely be worse on the Russian-held left bank of the Dnipro, making a detonation of explosives on the dam an unlikely move for Moscow.
"[Destroying the dam] would mean Russia essentially blowing its own foot off,”military analyst Michael Kofman said on the War on the Rocks podcast last month.
“[It] would flood the Russian-controlled part of Kherson [region]… much more than the western part that Ukrainians are likely to liberate."
And the secondary effects of blowing the dam could be just as severe for Russia.
Lowering the river level behind the dam threatens both water supplies to Moscow-annexed Crimea and risks cutting off access to cooling water for the Russian-controlled nuclear power plant in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region.
Water from the dam was also used to irrigate the southern Kherson oblast. The lack of water will disable the power generation at the dam which supplied the south.
The flood is likely to dissipate in a week or two but that does not change the major damages to the parts that Russia claims as its own.
The water will then have destroyed Russian mine fields on the left bank (seen from the spring) of the river. This will open routes for Ukrainian troops to cross the river and to attack into the southern Kherson oblast towards Crimea. There have previously reports that the Ukraine received bridging and ferry equipment for exactly this purpose.
BREAKING NEWS: Nova Kakhovka dam in Kherson Oblast, BLOWN UP
The Nova Kakhovka Dam in Kherson Oblast (Formerly Ukraine, now Russia) was blown up early Tuesday morning, sending massive flood waters south, mostly into Russian-held territory. An article last year on the consequences of blowing this dam outlined the stakes . . .
To put this in perspective, the water behind the dam is the size of Rhode island.
The dam is destroyed; there’s no partial destruction of dams. The water pressure will now demolish the rest of the dam.
The flood is intensifying. This water flow has the potential energy of hundreds of millions of tons of TNT.
Kherson should be evacuated immediately.
A multi-hundred foot chunk of the Nova Kakhovka dam is gone, the Kakhovka Reservoir is quickly emptying out into the Dnipro.
That Reservoir 18 km3 of fresh water which also supplies water to the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, and to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which is also under Russian control.
Ukrainians appear to be trying to flood Russians out of defensive positions.
Ukraine threatened to blow the dam last fall…one of the reasons the Russians withdrew from Kherson after evacuating 80,000 civilians.
I believe the power this dam provides to hydroelectric plant is also critical power source to the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant cooling systems.
This could have severe implications on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station that relies on the Kakhovka reservoir.
Not good.
As I post this now very credible on the ground reports the first villages downstream are being totally flooded and washed away.
TOTAL devastation and still under more and more water.
those who were still residing there have no chance of survival - at all.
3 villages are gone already; the water is heading towards additional small towns.
I have no information about the emergency procedures, alerts or ability in war to evacuate those people, or the numbers affected yet. I might soon and will post it is reliable.
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