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Notes -
Who do you guys think blew up the dam?
Russia pros
makes the area downriver nearly impassable in the short term, with the counter offensive kicking off kills that front.
could make crossing even upriver more difficult with much more mud to cross for a landing? This would allow them to concentrate forces on the donetsk / zaparozhne lines
Russia cons
humanitarian disaster and large escalation. Would make western populations more willing to keep writing the blank checks for the MIC
could threaten the nuclear plant within their own territory (this seems like a con for anyone in the region, Russian or Ukrainian though)
most models show more damage to the left bank of the Dnieper which they control and have fortified after the Kherson withdrawal.
cuts off a large supply of water to Crimea
Ukraine pros
Escalation, assuming a successful false flag would allow them to push for more western military aide. Ukraine's war is less against Russia and more against the minds of western populations as their continued support with elections upcoming is all that is keeping them afloat.
Long term (weeks to months for the banks to dry) easier to cross upriver to regain the nuclear plant.
potentially wipe out Russian minefields, troops and fortifications located downstream.
Ukraine cons
freezes the entire Kherson front right as the counter offensive seems to be kicking off.
damages their own territory, humanitarian disaster, threatens nuclear plant.
Edgecases:
God is laughing his ass off, Historic high levels and lack of maintenance due to war lead to failure of the dam on accident right as a major offensive is about to start and major escalations (attacks on civilians in Russian territory etc.) had just begun.
Some crazy high quality deep fakes? I guess it could lead to chaos and unbalance things downriver? Throw one side off? Would think they'd have better information sources for either side than twitter posts though.
"Shitty Soviet infrastructure crumbles under questionable operating conditions" has a certain Cold War schadenfreude to it -- I don't really see a major cost/benefit balance to it for either side, so "master plan" theories seem unlikely to pan out either way.
tldr; "Shit's fucked, yo"
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On balance it makes more sense for Russia to blow it up. The long-expected counteroffensive means Russian troops are 100% on the defensive and blowing up the dam secures their western flank by creating a literal quagmire. Yes, it fucks up the water supply to Crimea in the long term, but Russian war goals have been shifting to shorter and shorter terms.
Ukraine blowing it up to pin the blame on Russia is still a possibility, but that's too much 4D chess for me. The reservoir is important enough for the cities upstream and on the right bank that blowing it up to "own the
libsorcs" doesn't make a lot of sense.The biggest share of responsibility I can ascribe to Ukraine is that they'd learned about the Russian plans to blow up the dam the moment they would try to cross the river and staged a crossing to trigger the destruction of the dam ahead of the main counteroffensive to split the events in the news cycle and drum up more support.
Most likely Russians wanted to blow it up later, but somebody fucked up and blew it up earlier than expected, and most of the Russian troops weren't informed about the original blow up plans either (this is very common among Russians - they are regularly blowing themselves up on minefields that some other regiment made and forgot to notify the appropriate channels or the central command messed up the updates and the troops in the area didn't get the current maps of the same area. Military communications in Russian army are shit). Some sources - of course, no way to verify it so far - claim they even know who it was that was sent at that night to verify and complete the final rigging before the troops withdraw orderly and then in several days, when Ukrainian forces start to take over, the explosion happens and drowns them. But those people screwed up the job and caused the rigging (which was there since last December) to go off prematurely, when nobody wanted it. Thus also Russians initially claimed there's absolutely nothing happening - because that's what they were told is going to happen at that day, absolutely nothing.
That'd be unnecessary. Russia has a war crime list that would take a library to contain at this point. Adding one more to the list just for the sake of "making Russia look bad" is completely unnecessary - it already looks as bad as it could in the eyes of those who cares, and in the eyes of those who doesn't they'd parrot whatever lie Russia wheels out anyway (and the lie of course would be "they did it, not us" - it's the obvious move). There's absolutely no possible gain here.
There's no single "moment" - the river is big, the front line is long, and troops have been crossing here and there for a while. Likely, the idea was to blow it up when the first defense line of Russians on the left side is overwhelmed (that'd happen in days probably) and they fall back to the second line, and Ukrainians come in to take control, and position themselves perfectly to be flooded and to have a humanitarian catastrophe on their hands slowing down their advance (unlike Russians, Ukrainians can't just say "to hell with the population"). The exact time when it happens would likely be determined somewhere up there, as usually in Russia, and nobody really would know when until the last moment. It didn't work that way - instead, Russians were flooded themselves, and nobody is caring for the population in Russian-controlled flooded areas because Russia is just shooting at anybody who shows up there, because why not. It's a proper mess now.
Always have been. Reading about Barbarossa was eye-opening. The Germans identified where the border between two armies was, punctured the front line there, penetrating deeply into the rear, there was little to no coordination between the Soviet units on either side, so they had to fall back to hastily reform the frontline a few hundred km in the rear. At least the Soviet command learned their lesson and this never happ... nah, the Germans did it a dozen more times, routing the Soviet forces every time, until their supply lines finally gave out a few km away from Moscow.
Wait, so they got HoI4’d in real time?
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Russia or an accident, which could very well have been caused by Russia even if the specific timing wasn't.
There is little to no upside for Ukraine here, while there are significant pros for Russia. The propaganda wins would both be minimal and completely unneeded, as well as significant risk that the operation is discovered; at the same time as it significantly hinders their imminent/current offensive.
The somewhat muted russian media response could indicate that at least the timing was an accident, or that it was a panicked decision.
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