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OT: World Politics

Russians are destroying ALL the dams

It is not only the warnings since October 2022 that Russia might destroy the Kakhovka Dam, and, more recently, that the invaders were overfilling the dam, that cast doubts over Russia’s attempts to blame Ukraine for the catastrophic disaster now unfolding in Kherson oblast. Russia is also either building or destroying dams in occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia oblast, with its aim clearly to flood the territory and thus impede the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ anticipated counter-offensive.

The Centre for Journalist Investigations [CJI], citing local residents, reported on 7 June that the Russian invaders are either destroying dams on reservoirs or erecting them to ensure that the water overflows and floods roads and fields. It is assumed that the aim is to create bog-like conditions in the hope that this will prevent the advance of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.

CJI’s contacts have sent photos from the outskirts of occupied Tokmak, where, on the exit in the direction of Berdiansk (also under occupation), the Russians have erected a dam near the bridge over the Tokmachka River. The dam has resulted in a significant increase in the water level, with the shores overflowing.
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Environmental impacts of Kakhovka dam breach

Several hundred tonnes of lubricant and fuel oil were washed into the Dnipro river from the collapse of the Kakhovka hydroelectric plant, as well as landmines unearthed by the torrent. The flood also polluted groundwater sources, officials said, worsening a shortage of drinking water for local populations. The reservoir provided drinking water for the cities of Kherson and Krivyi Rih as well as the Crimean peninsula via a 400km canal.

The health ministry said a “plague” of rotting fish carcasses, effluent from latrines and contamination from cemeteries poised a serious risk of disease and instructed local residents not to consume water drawn from wells and ground pumps, as is still common in rural Ukraine.


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The lake held back by the dam covered 2,155 square kilometres before the barrier was breached, and contained 18 cubic kilometres of water. It provided irrigation for 584,000 hectares of arable land in the Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, which produced 4mn tonnes of grain and oilseed crops in 2021. With the reservoir drained, Kherson, an arid region in the far south, has lost 94 per cent of its irrigation, Zaporizhzhia 74 per cent, and Dnipropetrovsk 30 per cent.

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Denys Marchuk, the deputy chair of the Ukrainian Agrarian Council, a trade association, told Ukrainian television the dam’s destruction could cost the country up to 14 per cent of its grain exports. A third of the country’s beets, onions, cabbage and carrots — ingredients for the national dish of borschch — are produced in the region, he added.

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The disappearance of the dam has also ended the navigability of the Dnipro between the city of Zaporizhzhia and the Black Sea, a cheap form of transport for crops and industrial goods. The Kakhovka reservoir was also a vital source of water for heavy industry, including big steel and metallurgy plants in Nikopol and Krivyi Rih.

The agricultural ministry said 95,000 tonnes of fish could be lost. A video shared online by Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, showed thousands of fish flopping around on a dry riverbed on the banks of Maryanske village, Dnipropetrovsk region, 90km upstream from the destroyed dam.
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Volcanologist said:
Russia starting to play dirty in their desperation
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Yeah, you can convince me that there is short term tactical wisdom in doing what they did to the bridge and simply aren't worried about war crimes tribunals in the future because they need to win to not get murdered in an overthrow anyway. There are progressive pathways of logic in there that make sense on various levels.

But shelling the civilians evacuating on the one side while not allowing the civilians on the other side to get out is nazi level shit. They're just trying to cause pain until it breaks Ukraines will.
 
Wayward DP said:
yeah they seem to very much know what they're doing. for now, we wait.
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I'm not even convinced this is the counter offensive yet. They're not committing men and equipment to any one push, when they win engagements they're pulling the armor and arty back and holding areas with light infantry, etc.

I think they know something the rest of us think but don't really known....just how thin the mobile Russian reserves are...and they're still looking at hollowing out reinforcement/logistics capacity before committing forces.

The increased arty attacks is probably to weaken or eliminate areas their intel showed as abnormally well fortified. One of the better daily youtube guys I watch laid out a handful of the Zap assaults on topigraphic maps and the Ukies weren't trying to win settlements, they were trying to cut the ability of the Russians to lay fire from multiple directions on potential future ukie directional attacks, and claim strategic positions in forested high ground in the process.

Basically, I think they're still shaping but with more of an eye towards unraveling specific spots in Russian lines (in a lot of cases the strength of many Russian positions are predicated on other nearby positions being able to provide directional crossfire that limits the Ukies potential paths of assault) and making currently defended spots the Russians hold untenable, forcing withdrawal from key spots without having to take all of them by force.
 
MindzEye said:
But shelling the civilians evacuating on the one side while not allowing the civilians on the other side to get out is nazi level shit. They're just trying to cause pain until it breaks Ukraines will.
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That’s been the case as soon as they met resistance (so basically day 1.)

e.g. The deliberate bombing of apartments in Kharkiv.
 


This would be a significant win if it's accurate. I'm trying to find the other one, but apparently this would be the second significant breach of the line in Zap in the last 8 hours.
 
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