Kajovka, demolition of military experts, precise and deadly

The possibility of flying Kakhovka Dam The government of Ukraine already analyzed it on October 20. On that day, President Volodymyr Zelensky reported that The Russian army planned to demolish the dam flood the Kherson region, then controlled by Moscow, and blame Kiev for an almost genocidal action against its own population. At the time, Russia was barely maintaining control of the region, with rival forces constantly attacking its defenses, and the commander sent by the Kremlin, Sergei Surovikin, denounced the Ukrainians as planning to attack the dam and its power plant with missiles. Hydro power plant. A perfect excuse for Putin’s defenders to attack the government in Kyiv, Zelensky believes.

Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, told the meeting that he considered blowing up the dam extremely complicated. Its construction dates back to the middle of the last century, and all the engineering was designed for tough times. Resist the attack. The works began in 1947 and were completed in 1956, when the hydroelectric power plant began operating. AND designed a colossal project Josip Stalin. It owes its name to the city built at the foot of a large wall to accommodate workers.

The Russian dictator knew what he was doing and the importance of swamps in case of war, both for defensive and military purposes. Stalin knew the value of nature as a weapon. IN in 1941 he himself ordered vbreach the Dnieper dam to prevent the Nazis from occupying Zaporozhye in full retreat of the Red Army. Millions of cubic meters of water poured into the Dnieper River and prevented the advance of German soldiers. At least 20,000 people died by flood

Namely, a valuable part of the complex hydrological structure of Ukraine, but also of Russia, is owed to the dictator. During his regime, the Soviet Union developed a vast network of canals, reservoirs and large hydroelectric plants. This is what was called the Soviet Atlantis, which left some examples of Stalin’s megalomania in cases such as the Rybinsk Dam, north of Moscow, or the Kremenchuck Dam, in Ukraine. In this republic, about two hundred villages were buried under water, and their inhabitants, together with their livestock, were evacuated to other regions. The dark shadow of Stalinism covers with tragedy this huge project that the dictator carried out to facilitate the economic development of the USSR. Historians believe that as many as 150,000 people lost their lives in the construction of the dams. Thousands of workers fell (mostly prisoners) exhausted under the difficult working conditions and numerous families who did not want to leave their homes ended up drowning.

Concrete and rammed earth

Kajovka was another example of that size of infrastructure. The dam burst at dawn 240 kilometers long and have one maximum width of 23 kilometers, which in practice makes it an artificial lake. Hence the importance of the disaster, which it could flood eighty cities within days.

To withstand the pressure of the water, the dam is built of concrete and rammed earth. It was a huge wall almost four kilometers long and sixteen meters high, which, despite the legend of indestructibility, was partially demolished. The Ukrainian government hopes to achieve an immediate reconstruction of the dam, but assumes that the hydroelectric power plant is lost forever.

Kajovka’s endurance is legendary. In fact, in the conflicts to expel the Russians from Kherson the object was hit by Ukrainian missiles and continued to stand. The Moscow media remind that last November the dam was damaged by the explosion of the Himar rocket launched by the Ukrainian army. And they add that a series of blows to this structure would weaken its resistance enough to collapse.

However, this hypothesis is not approved by Ukrainian experts, who believe that it is impossible to demolish a dam of such proportions with the conventional weapons at the disposal of their army. “The weapons currently used by the Ukrainians to destroy roads and bridges are not enough”Jurij Sobolevski, the first vice-president of the Kherson Regional Council, told the digital media UP’.

The head of military espionage, Kyrylo Budanov, told the same newspaper last October that the dam was “really built with military actions in mind: it’s a capital structure with a margin of safety. It is very difficult to destroy it from the outside, it probably requires tactical nukes. But if there is access to this infrastructure, as Russian troops have, then it can be undermined from within.”

This is the key that Zelensky’s government is currently considering. A few months ago, the president warned that Russian troops mined the locks of the reservoir and the base of the headquarters electric. The General Staff does not rule out that the cause of the collapse is the same mine or a more recent action by Russian military demolition experts, after Moscow approved the flood as a last resort against the announced Ukrainian counter-offensive in the Donetsk region.

Military sources claim that breaking through it required very precise knowledge of the dam’s weak points, along with very wide access to the facilities. Because, according to the data collected so far, the technicians suspect that the blasting, at least partially, could have been carried out from the inside, and not just by direct sabotage on the outer wall. “To destroy the Kakhov Dam, tens of tons of properly placed explosives are needed. You can’t place them somewhere nearby because they won’t do anything,” warned Budanov at that October meeting, where an expert on this type of operation specified that a six-ton ​​TNT detonation would only open a small hole in the concrete. wall. Technicians calculate that the Russians would need much larger amounts of explosives to breach the dam, or to cause enough damage for the water pressure to breach it.

While the Kremlin denies that the disaster in Kahovka was the result of its military action, in the minds of the Zelenskyi government, but also in the leadership of NATO, Stalin’s previous experience in stopping the advance of the Nazis through floods is remembered.

The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine has already warned of the danger of the dam collapsing. According to his analysis, there would then be an “artificial and uncontrolled flood” that would flood both banks of the river, but especially the left area of ​​Kherson because their houses were located at a lower level of the ground. A perfect X-ray of what happened this Tuesday. The water, according to other estimates, will affect nearly a million people and dry up irrigation canals in a large area, including all of southern Kherson, the valuable Kalanchak rice fields, and even the Crimea. After the first devastating attack on the alluvial plains, Kherson already has water in the streets.