Austrian aerial warfare analyst and historian, Tom Cooper, has shared his opinion on the Kakhovka HPP blow-up.
“For nearly 16 months, I’ve held myself back in regards of ‘all out’ accusations of Russia. I was and I still am trying to avoid getting emotional. Serious analysis of any war is like money: it’s corrupting the soul. It takes lots of restraint, otherwise one is easily slipping into PRBS…. But…sigh… this morning even I can’t but conclude that Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and his FSB henchmen have successfully converted the Russian Federation into a terrorist state.
The last night, hordes of barbarians commanded by that jerk have unleashed an unprecedented campaign of terror upon Ukraine.
….by side that around 23.00-23.30hrs Tu-95MS have released 36 Kh-101 and Kh-555 cruise missiles from above the Caspian Sea and that 35 of these were shot down…
….by side that the Russians targeted Kharkiv with S-300 SAMs fired in ballistic mode…
But, at around 02.00hrs in the morning, the Russians blew up the giant Kakhovka HPP.
From my point of view, there is no way to explain the resulting catastrophe in words. It is impossible to predict its consequences. Perhaps when I compare this catastrophe to the one of Chornobyl of 1986, few might wake up. But, I do not find even this for a good comparison: there are no comparisons. Thus, please, do not come to the ideas like asking me who’s going to take advantage and profit from this action. When things reach proportions of catastrophe this act has caused there are no ‘winners’.
I do find it interesting to monitor Russian reactions to all of this, though.
Gauging by what is coming out from Russian officials (and their collaborators in Ukraine), it seems the Russians ‘tried to blow up just a little bit’ of the dam, and that Moscow never informed even its Gauleiter for Nova Kakhovka, Vladimir Leontiev.
Indeed, the super-turbo-smart military geniuses in Moscow and elsewhere have never considered the fact that the dam has already suffered extensive damage in earlier fighting, while they haven’t maintained it for over a year. And that, contrary to March, when the water level was extremely low, after heavy rains of this spring, the reservoir was almost at maximum capacity. Brimming full. Which means that the results of as idiotic actions as blowing up the dam must be maximal too…
Once the dam was blown up, there was no reaction in Russia for hours: who cares about dozens of thousands of people living downstream?
Even if, around 06.00hrs Gauleiter Leontiev explained that the story about the dam being blown up is ‘nonsense’…”
The full text of a column can be found here.
