50
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Russia destroys Kherson-region dam
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- Title
- Live updates: Russia's war in Ukraine
- Authors
- By <a href="/profiles/tara-subramaniam">Tara Subramaniam</a>, CNN
- Published
- Jun 6 2023
- Word count
- 2728 words
It's difficult to overstate just how large the Kakhovka reservoir is: according to Reuters, it's supposed to hold 18 cubic kilometres of water, which is roughly the same as Utah's Great Salt Lake.
Terrible impact for those local to the dam. Apparently Crimea will be vastly affected from water supply issues as well.
(1st post here…let me know if I did anything wrong)
On the bright side this is a sign Russia has basically given up all hope of helping Crimea in the long run.
Welcome! Nothing wrong, but I would suggest you check out the topic log in the sidebar. It helps to se the tags that our tagmaster @mycketforvirrad adds to keep things organized here. I try to keep an eye on them to see what I missed to make it less work for the Swede.
Will do. Thanks!
One other thing to note — there is a megathread for the conflict in Ukraine to prevent it from dominating the front page when the amount of news items is high. However, it’s not wrong to highlight important item with their own thread, and I think this definitely qualifies! Just FYI :)
Thanks @streblo! I saw the mega thread but also thought this warranted its own post given how big of an item it was. Glad to hear that was correct. I enjoy seeing news updates when I check into the site.
Appreciate the feedback!
I’ve seen the pictures of this on the BBC, and they struggle to impart the scale of this break at a glance. It wasn’t until I saw the “tiny” three-storey building next to it that I realised just how fucked the downstream region is. 🙁
Russia is just saying fuck it.
They are already a pariah - what punishment and consequences can be used by the US/EU that they haven't already done?
I mean, F-16s to Ukraine, ATACMS to Ukraine, more GMLRS, more western armor, and if you really want to go all the way to the brink of war you can re-establish the AVG but with F-35s and F-22s.
There's quite a bit of room on the escalation ladder that the West hasn't gotten to yet.
Nuclear plant will probably be the next issue, what with the dam supplying its coolant.
I've read that they have backup solutions for the plant, so it's not explicitly at risk beyond being in a war zone where one side isn't really paying attention to anything resembling rules.
5 cm an hour is in absolutely insane number.
I wish the best for those downstream.
The napkin math I read was something like "a single fire truck driving back and forth to the nearest body of water can easily handle it".
The best (worst?) part is this dam isn't really important as a military objective anyway. There hasn't been much recent fighting south of the dam, everything has been north/East of it, so destroying the dam has no impact on that. Additionally the Russians are on the east side of the river, which experienced more flooding.
I've been away so haven't really kept my finger on the pulse of things but this does change the math on the counter-offensive, no?
Previously, there was at least the threat of establishing a beachhead over the Dnieper, and now that's now longer on the table. I have to imagine that was the objective of destroying the dam.
Edit: Some musings on this from Mike Kofman
That was certainly the idea behind it, or at least it's hard to imagine what else could have been the plan, but that doesn't mean it actually is going to have any impact.
In addition to what Kofman said, you have reports of the AMX tank like things near Novodonetske, which is both the logical place for a counteroffensive (cutting the Russian territory in half if they can reach the sea) and also happens to be nowhere near the flooded area, or the river in general.
The ISW has also been reporting about significant fighting both around Novodonetske and Bakhmut but nothing around Kherson recently, and assesses that the flooding will likely not impact counteroffensive operations.
In short I've seen many reasons to think the counteroffensive will be focused north/east of the dam and thus in areas that won't be effected by the flooding.
The only evidence to the contrary is that Russia probably wouldn't have destroyed the dam if they didn't think it would bring them some benefit, but there's been enough incompetence and senseless cruelty out of Russia in this war that I don't see that as hard evidence.
I agree, what we've seen so far suggests a more eastern offensive than was originally anticipated. Which makes sense, given the level of fortifications on the western side of the southern front. Although I don't think we can rule out feigned attacks yet, it's likely Ukraine will want to pull at least some Russian reserves away if possible.
Yea very true. I think I was settling on the first point, but you're second point also rings very true.