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Russia has denied causing the damage to the dam. But in October 2022, Benjamin Jensen, a defense strategist at American University’s School of International Service, was warning of the danger of increased targeting of civilian infrastructure as the war progressed.

In response to setbacks on the battlefield, “Russia has increased its attacks in Ukraine on everything from power plants and dams to railways, pipelines and ports,” he noted, adding, “These attacks against civilian infrastructure are not random. Rather, they reflect an insidious calculus integral to modern Russian military theory. For more than 20 years, Russian military journals have emphasized the need to conduct noncontact warfare and target critical infrastructure.”

It forms part of a “coercive strategy” by which Russia attempts to manipulate the enemy through a mix of political, economic and military pressure.

After it became apparent that Russia’s initial war plan was sufficiently countered by Western-backed Ukrainian resistance, Moscow upped its attacks on infrastructure in line with this coercive strategy.

“While military campaigns historically target transportation infrastructure, Russia went further. In response to the ongoing counteroffensive – which has seen Ukrainian forces retake formerly Russian occupied land in the east and south of the country – coercive measures by Russia have escalated to include targeting major dams. In mid-September 2022, Russia tried to destroy the dam outside of Kryvyi Rih, a city of half a million people,” wrote Jensen.

If the Ukrainian interpretation of what happened at the Kakhovka dam is accepted, this time, Russia succeeded.

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Regardless of who is to blame over the dam’s rupture, the incident will affect the war.

Stefan Wolff and David Hastings Dunn, from the University of Birmingham in the U.K., noted the timing of the destruction: just as Ukraine seemed poised to launch a major counteroffensive.

“The enormous flood that it has triggered is likely to devastate vast areas on both banks of the Dnieper south toward Crimea. This will make offensive operations by Ukrainian ground forces in this area difficult, probably for months to come, and without similarly weakening Russian defensive lines,” they wrote, adding: “Moreover, it will also make it more difficult for Ukrainian forces to advance further toward Crimea, the peninsula that Russia has illegally occupied since 2014.”

If this was the intended purpose then it would mark “a new phase in this war,” Wolff and Hastings Dunn wrote. “It demonstrates Moscow’s effort to control the narrative as to who is responsible for the most heinous acts in the conflict after many months of negative coverage of the Russian conduct of the war.” And in sacrificing hydroelectric power and drinking water to Crimea, the move would suggest “a callous disregard for the inhabitants [of Crimea], many of them ethnic Russians.”

“Despite the Kremlin’s rhetoric, what this episode suggests is that Russia is less interested in liberating Ukraine from its present leadership than it is in destroying its ability to function as a sovereign nation,” Wolff and Hastings Dunn wrote.

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