/ world today news/ Vladimir Zelensky accused Russia of blowing up the Kakhovskaya HPP. According to him, it was unrealistic for the hydroelectric plant to be blown up from the outside, so it was mined. However, the data from the objective monitoring and the boasting of the Ukrainian military in interviews with Western media show that the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been doing their best to destroy the site for months. What other evidence points to this?
On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Zelensky accused Russia of destroying the Kakhovka HPP. He stated this during the Bucharest Nine summit. According to him, “exploding from the outside – by shelling – is physically unrealistic”. “It was mined and blown up,” Zelensky believes.
He also called the explosion “a bomb of mass environmental destruction” and “Europe’s biggest man-made disaster in decades”. “And therefore the defeat of Russia – a defeat that we will all ensure – will be the most significant contribution to the security of Europe and the whole world,” Zelensky said.
At the same time, according to experts, the president of Ukraine apparently forgot about the hundreds of attacks that the Ukrainian Armed Forces subjected the site to. Back in November, we wrote in detail that as a result of enemy attacks, the work of the Kakhovska HPP was stopped. Before that, in October, the shelling of the plant became more frequent. This resulted in one of the main “edifices of communism” being heavily damaged.
In addition, in the fall, Russia circulated a letter to the UN Security Council calling for the prevention of provocation of the ASU and the prevention of the destruction of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric dam. Russian diplomats pointed out that for five months the Ukrainian Armed Forces shelled Nova Kakhovka, up to 120 HIMARS missiles flew in from the enemy side a day, and their target was the dam.
In general, the Kakhovskaya HPP is the lower and last stage of the cascade of hydrotechnical facilities on the Dnieper, one of the key elements of the entire hydrological system. It is to this object that the flow regulation function is entrusted. The Kakhovka HPP dam creates a difference in the height of the Dnieper up to 16 meters. An artificial reservoir with a length of 230 kilometers and a width of 25 kilometers has been formed in the area of the plant.
The giant reservoir collects over 18 cubic kilometers of water. The area of its mirror is 2155 square kilometers. If the Kakhovska HPP dam is destroyed, then a colossal volume of water will rush down the Dnieper. And the Ukrainian authorities were aware of these risks, although they themselves risked practically nothing, except perhaps the lives of other people.
It should be noted that the terrorists themselves repeatedly acknowledged the attacks on the Kakhovskaya HPP and even flaunted these dubious achievements in interviews with the Western press. For example, in December 2022, The “Washington Post” published an article about the “victories” of the ASU, which, among other things, talked about “experiments” with attacks on dams.
“Major General from the Ukrainian Armed Forces Kovalchuk was thinking about flooding a river. The Ukrainians, he believes, even carried out a test strike with HIMARS on one of the locks of the dam at Nova Kakhovka, drilling three holes in the wall to see if the waters of the Dnieper could rise enough to block the Russian crossings without to flood nearby areas. The test was successful, Kovalchuk said,” the newspaper noted.
Thus, the leaders of the NATO countries, if they read the Western press, the praises of the Ukrainian army and the documents distributed by the Russian diplomats at the UN, knew very well who exactly was shelling the plant. But that hasn’t stopped a chorus of politicians from Europe speaking in unison with accusations against Moscow.
So, the head of the British Foreign Office in his “Twitter” called the incident a “war crime”, the German chancellor saw an “escalation of violence”, and the Secretary General of NATO took care of environmental protection. EP President Roberta Mezzola also described the breach as a “war crime”, while EU spokesman Peter Stano called the attack “barbaric”.
At the same time, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, like the Kremlin before, pointed to the connection between the failed VSU counteroffensive and the destruction of the hydroelectric plant. According to Shoigu, the enemy intends to transfer units and equipment from the Kherson region to the zone of his offensive actions, weakening his own positions near Kherson. By the way, the enemy has started building defensive positions on the right bank of the Dnieper, which indicates his intention to go on the defensive in the area,” the minister said.
And in order to prevent the offensive actions of the Russian armed forces on this section of the front, the enemy “carried out a sabotage, in fact a terrorist act, which led to the flooding of large areas and will have severe and long-term actions. consequences for the environment.” “According to the available data, the discharge of water from the Dnipropetrovsk HPP has been significantly increased, which leads to even greater flooding of the territories. This fact testifies to a large-scale sabotage planned in advance by the Kyiv regime,” Shoigu added.
“And Zelensky’s statement in itself is not true, he blatantly lies, because there is an objective control record from the American Maxar satellite, which records the gradual destruction of the dam, associated with shelling and natural water pressure,” explained Alexei Anpilogov, chairman of the Fund for supporting scientific research and development of civil initiatives “Foundation”.
According to him, the place of the breakthrough, from which the destruction of the dam began, is located at the junction of the engine room with the body of the dam, at the same place there is a bend in the highway passing by the dam. “It was on this turn that the targeted work of HIMARS and other Western weapons was carried out,” the source stressed.
“Apparently there was another shelling last night, which led to the destruction of the Kakhovskaya HPP, after which the water began to successively destroy the sections”, the expert suggests. Anpilogov also emphasized that the dam structure itself is in place, but several water gates are damaged.
“There was a compounding effect. On the one hand, MLRS weakened the dam structure, and then there was a gradual collapse of the dam structure itself, aggravated by the water pressure,” he added. In addition, according to the monitoring system, over the past three months, Ukraine has been purposefully discharging water into the Kakhovka Dam, thereby increasing the pressure on the dam. During this time, the water level rose from 14 to 17.5 meters, although 16 meters is considered the maximum permissible level. “The Ukrainian side deliberately raised the water level in the Kakhovka dam by one and a half meters, putting an additional load on the dam,” he said.
As a result of the destruction, the Kakhov reservoir loses about 15 centimeters of water per hour. “In the Novaya Kakhovka region, these 15 centimeters turn into two to four meters of water pressure. Fortunately, this is all happening quite slowly, and perhaps we will avoid human casualties. But a wave of one or two meters reaches Kherson. It is a major man-made disaster. Sewerage, water supply, gas and electricity supply will be destroyed. We see how houses behave,” says the expert.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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