And I could easily flip the question around to OP. Why would Ukraine blow up their own dam, flooding their own territory and potentially crippling their own nuclear power plant? And making a counteroffensive across the Dnipro river that much harder?
It's not to deprive Crimea of water ahead of the counteroffensive, Crimea's reservoirs are full right now so they've got a year's worth in the tank. That's about the only possible benefit I can think of that Ukraine might have got out of this, and even if it were so it would be a trivial benefit compared to the costs. Crimea's water supply isn't going to make a difference to the actual fight that's about to happen there.
Ukraine doesn't need more justification. Russia is occupying their territory. It doesn't make sense for Ukraine to cause yet more internal displacement and risk a nuclear meltdown for something it already has.
Ukraine doesn’t need more justification. Russia is occupying their territory.
That doesn’t justify Ukraine’s shelling of the eastern territories in the Donbass. If that requires military intervention by Russia, that’s unfortunate for the western propaganda narrative of Russian military aggression.
I'm not speaking of morality. I'm speaking of whether it would convince anyone that Ukraine should be "allowed" to do anything in particular. Most people have already chosen a position. This dam will make little difference, but it will have an impact on Ukraine.
What's the point of flooding a region by destroying your "assets" when you could mass bombing like a deaf these villages.
After all, the west sells the war like an hegemonic move with mass slaughtering traits. Why Russia is not so heavy on using aviation, then?
US were using tomahawks on Syria for less than that.
If destruction and high toll number (aka ethnic cleansing) was the goal, they won't deliver like a grocery shop.
At least in the US, most people are not tracking this in anything but generalities. If they even know this dam was breached, they won't know the significance. It's also doesn't have quite the visual impact of row after row of bombed out apartments or bound bodies from a massacre.
One thing would be that Russia has already set a precedent with a long campaign to attack and destroy civilian infrastructure (power and heat specifically) just before winter to cause bigger humanitarian crisis.
The fact there are collateral damage, yes, the fact that is intentional annihilation, nope.
You want to see what is it for a country loosing its infrastructure during a war?
google:
"how much infrastructure was destroyed in Iraqi, Syria, Afghanistan ?" And "how".
It is not with 2 mortars blowing up a kitchen and fighting on the field.
Ukrainians still have broadband internet, can shop on Amazon and our officials can travel freely in Kiev.
Even Sean Penn could deliver in hand his golden toy to a country leader who should be in a bunker instead of making photo-shoot if he or Kiev was really threatened!
Funny how fickle someone's memory can be. I'm not talking about collateral damage from strikes on military targets, I'm talking about campaign directed against Ukraine's power grid during last autumn and winter.
I even remember people here and on lemmygrad cheering on reports of how much of energy infrastructure was destroyed and admiring pictures of dark cities during blackouts. But I guess that didn't happen? Or maybe the entire thing was fine because it failed?
Again, if he was in mass slaughter mode like said on the TV and apparently reddit refugees, your grid would have been wiped out.
It's not an isolated kitchen in city but a whole block that Russia would have destroyed.
To divert resources from/mess up Ukraine's planned offensive.
Also they haven't exactly been below causing great suffering for civilians simply because they can throughout this war.
Also, when evaluating Russian actions in the war, always consider that their main objective is propaganda, sometimes for the domestic audience, sometimes for the world. Destroying the Kakhovka dam was very popular among state TV propagandists, until they discovered it was better to accuse Ukraine of doing it. However, the purpose of Russian propaganda is always to create confusion and uncertainty, and create doubt that there is such a thing as truth.
My speculation as to why they would do such a horrible thing is because they know they can't hold the position and want to cause as much damage as possible before they leave. Why would they bomb civilian targets like apartment buildings?
But if Russia did destroy the dam, he says, it might have hoped to protect its western flank by complicating Ukraine’s offensive moves. “We know the Russians have form for this sort of thing,” he argues, pointing to Stalin’s destruction of the Dnieper dam at Zaporizhia in 1941.
Not the OP but to create chaos and divert resources to aid the area would be my guess. Creating a sense of fear and uncertainty is one kind of tactic in my opinion.
If you are a podcast listener type. The War on the Rocks podcast has been pretty extensively covering the war in Ukraine and has some really good insights. I wouldnt be shocked if they cover this incident in a future episode.
Crimea depends on water via canal from Ukraine-controlled territory, which Ukraine shut off as was their right. This must be the big f u back in retaliation.
Putin is not a communist and no serious communist claims otherwise, being against NATO and the US's proxy war against Russia does not mean that I support Putin and his horrible government.
The European intelligence made clear that the would-be attackers were not rogue operatives. All those involved reported directly to Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s highest-ranking military officer, who was put in charge so that the nation’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wouldn’t know about the operation, the intelligence report said.
Poland, NATO say missile strike wasn’t a Russian attack
PRZEWODOW, Poland (AP) — NATO member Poland and the head of the military alliance both said Wednesday that a missile strike in Polish farmland that killed two people appeared to be unintentional and was probably launched by air defenses in neighboring Ukraine.
“Ukraine’s defense was launching their missiles in various directions, and it is highly probable that one of these missiles unfortunately fell on Polish territory,” said Polish President Andrzej Duda. “There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to suggest that it was an intentional attack on Poland.”
Edit: downvoted for correcting misinfo quoting NATO and the Polish government, that's pretty funny :P