Dam’s Destruction is reshaping Ukraine, but not Arc of the War
The Ukrainian soldiers sped along a dirt road, their pickup truck bouncing over tracks lest they become easy targets for Russian tanks across the Dnipro River.
Nearby, Russian howitzers fired with deafening booms, sending shells flying over the ruins of the Kakhovka dam, the destruction of which caused a flood this week with far-reaching humanitarian and economic consequences. As Kiev reckons with the devastation, the military must also fight in the flood zone, adjust and adapt to the changing contours of the country to achieve its broader strategic goals.
Fighting continued unabated Thursday in the area of the destroyed dam, over the vast flood waters downstream and over the disappearing reservoir upstream.
“Soldiers will start fighting again,” said a commander who fought near the dam, asking to be identified by his nickname, Barakuda, for security reasons and in accordance with Ukrainian military rules. “They already do.”
The two armies resumed artillery bombardments even as mudflats formed Thursday along the shores of what was once a body of water the size of Utah’s Great Salt Lake, and is expected to largely disappear.
The dam’s destruction physically changes this front in the war, but not necessarily in a way that will hinder Ukraine’s long-planned counter-offensive with its newly acquired arsenal of Western weapons.
The main thrusts are expected in another battleground, on the open plains of the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions in the east. The changes in this part of the frontline, formed by the Dnipro River, are beneficial and detrimental to both armies.
Below the dam, soldiers who faced each other about a mile apart across the river are now separated by miles of flood water. Upstream, the reservoir, wide enough to be difficult to see in places, is disappearing into mudflats, potentially bringing the two sides closer together, though the area is now a stinking, swampy wasteland with no apparent military use.
“This will have a certain impact, as the landscape of the future battlefield has changed significantly and even the front line itself has changed,” Natalia Humeniuk, the spokeswoman for Ukraine’s southern military command, told local news outlets. “But this is not a critical change.”
The military had weighed up the possibility of Russia blowing up the dam, she added. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has warned against this.
The flooding will have little effect on Ukraine’s counteroffensive, as the military never intended to make fighting along the river a major part of the overall campaign, Mykhailo Samus, director of the Army, Conversion and Disarmament Center, said. military research organization in Kiev. in a telephone interview.
Ukraine’s threats of a river strike were designed to force Russia to move troops away from the main attack zone, he said. “Before the flood we had to cross the Dnipro and after the flood it is the same, only more difficult,” he said. “Auxiliary and diversionary maneuvers can still be carried out.”
The Institute for the Study of War said on Wednesday that the flood had washed away Russian defense positions on the eastern bank, potentially easing Ukraine’s attacks. That report could not be independently verified.
In the south, where the mouth of the Dnipro opens into the Black Sea, a strategic sandbar held by the Russians could now become vulnerable if parts of it flood, Ukrainian officials said.
The Russians took full control of the sand bar, the Kinburn Spit, in June in one of their last notable advances in the south. They held it long after their forces were driven out of the Kherson region west of the Dnipro River, allowing them to stop the flow of shipping in the delta and fire on coastal communities in the Ukrainian-held territory.
The flooding could jeopardize those positions if parts of the headland are submerged, turning it into an island and cutting off supply routes, said Ms Humeniuk, the spokeswoman for the southern command. “This will certainly complicate the enemy’s logistics,” she said.
As before the flood, the skirmishes following the destruction of the dam have largely taken the same form: ranged artillery strikes in a battle for control of islands in the Dnipro river delta.
“The river was the front line, so we never had direct contact” with Russian troops, the commander, Barakuda, said.
Russia fired 34 shots at Ukrainian-occupied territories in the West Bank on Wednesday, according to the regional governor’s office. In one instance, Russian troops used incendiary bombs to attack the village of Odradokamyanka, just south of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station.
Fighting in the area was fierce. Ukraine kept Beryslav, the city on the west bank, and Russia controlled Kakhovka on the east bank. Ukrainian soldiers could not approach the dam on the west bank, Barakuda said, because they would be in the crosshairs of Russian snipers. Parts of Beryslav are also within range of tanks on the Russian-occupied coast.
Both sides, he said, had electronic jammers in the dam area to prevent drone attacks. “When we flew in this area, we lost the video link and lost control,” he said.
As they drove through the area on Thursday, Ukrainian soldiers in pickup trucks had to make repeated U-turns after running into flooded streets and seeking alternative routes. Plumes of black smoke rose over nearby villages from artillery strikes. Small arms fire could be heard as soldiers fired overhead at Russian drones.
The route to the river bank crosses an open field of yellow, purple and orange wildflowers exposed by tanks on the Russian-occupied bank. The soldiers ran across the field and then stopped at the ruins of an apartment building.
From a hole in an upper wall, the destroyed dam could be viewed a mile or so away, a smudge of debris on the water silhouetted against the sky. Before the explosion, Barakuda said, Russian soldiers could be seen from such Ukrainian positions as they rotated through guard duty on the dam.
The Ukrainians have blamed Russia for the destruction of the dam, which was under Russian control. Blowing it up, Barakuda said, would stop Ukraine from storming the site and using it to move heavy equipment across the Dnipro River.
He thought the intensity of fighting in the area over the winter indicated Russian nervousness about such an attack.
He and other soldiers who fought in Beryslav said it was unlikely to be an all-out military maneuver on the part of the Russians. According to them, the destruction appeared primarily to create economic and humanitarian difficulties for Ukraine in retaliation for opening the counter-offensive in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.
“It was political,” said one soldier who asked to be identified by his nickname, Barret, who has been fighting in Beryslav since last fall. “It was a demonstrative explosion to show they can destroy infrastructure.”
Marc Santora And Maria Varenikova reporting contributed.