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.
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.
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
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.
Here is an article that isn’t blocked behind a paywall and that accurately attributes the damage to Russian forces.
Evacuations begin after a major dam in southern Ukraine is heavily damaged https://www.npr.org/2023/06/06/1180345954/kakhovka-dam-southern-ukraine-damaged-russia
Okay, I’ll bite. What, in your personal opinion, is the reason for Russian military do blow up the dam? What is the benefit?
To slow down Ukraine crossing Dnepr and attacking Crimea.
General scorched earth strategy
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.
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 same reason Russia had to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline: they didn’t have any and they didn’t do it, America blew up the pipeline :^)
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream
https://archive.today/deCDi
https://archive.today/urSDh
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/06/05/nord-stream-expedition-official-investigators/
defending an evil regime because somehow putin is communist and deserves to be defended in this?
And fired a missle at Poland
Fired a what at whom?
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-g-20-summit-nato-biden-government-and-politics-c76bead57a11bc8397a30ee7bb06264e
Poland, NATO say missile strike wasn’t a Russian attack
Edit: downvoted for correcting misinfo quoting NATO and the Polish government, that’s pretty funny :P
I mentioned Polen middle thing as similar to Nord steam thing: No Russian involvement
I see, I read it as a serious claim of them doing it since it was a pretty common talking point a few months ago, sorry hehe :P
The well known Kremlin propagandist… Andrzej Duda XD
There are only 2 types of people who deny that Russia blew up the pipeline:
https://archive.today/2023.06.11-091350/https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/06/nord-stream-pipeline-explosion-ukraine-russia/