|
In response to
"Outside Kherson, abandoned clothes, food and ammunition are signs of a hasty Russian withdrawal."
by
crash davis
|
Satellite images show damage to a major dam in Kherson.
|
KYIV, Ukraine — After an explosion took down the last bridge over the Dnipro River out of the city of Kherson before dawn on Friday, Ukrainian officials and military analysts turned their eyes to new damage to a dam in the city of Nova Kakhovka, some 50 miles to the northeast.
The road over the dam was the last major crossing left to Russian forces. It is also a vital piece of infrastructure that holds back a body of water the size of the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
For weeks, the Ukrainians have warned that Moscow might damage the dam in a way to cause a mass casualty event. Before its troops fled on Friday, Russia sought to stoke fear in Kherson by saying Ukraine planned to blow up the dam.
It is not in the interest of either army to destroy the dam, military analysts have said, as it would have an impact on both armies, now on opposite banks of the river.
But satellite images show that the area around the dam has suffered damage between Thursday and Friday, when Russian forces retreated to the east side of the Dnipro, abandoning Kherson and the surrounding territory on the west bank.
An image taken by the U.S. satellite imagery company Maxar at 10:25 a.m. local time on Friday showed that three spans of both the road and the railroad at the northern end of the connecting bridge spanning the dam had been destroyed. Images from the previous day showed no damage.
It remained unclear whether the dam’s structural integrity or its sluice gates had been damaged. Neither could it be determined which side was responsible.
Reports of explosions at or near the dam started circulating on the Telegram messaging app around 6:30 a.m. local time. Maxar said images showed several other bridges that cross the Dnipro river had also been damaged after Russian troops withdrew.
Ukrainian strikes on small bridges over the dam’s spillway had already partly closed the route to vehicle traffic.
Even before the war, the dam’s importance was evident. Its reservoir is crucial to the operations of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, about 100 miles upriver, providing the water necessary for cooling functions.
As Russian positions grew more precarious recently, Moscow accused Ukraine of planning to destroy the dam — a claim that Ukraine and its Western allies dismissed as absurd.
Kyiv has said that it had no incentive to flood its own land and that the Russian accusations, made without evidence, were a sign Moscow was preparing a “false flag” operation to blow up the dam itself, potentially flooding 80 towns, villages and cities, including Kherson.
“Russia is consciously laying the groundwork for a large-scale disaster in Ukraine’s south,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine warned during an address to the European Council last month.
— Marc Santora and Christiaan Triebert
|
Responses:
|
