Tens of thousands of homes in Ukraine are at risk of being washed away by the partial destruction of the country's massive Kakhovka Dam. And evidence suggests the culprit was not Russia as Ukraine is claiming, but rather Kiev itself.
Back in December, the Washington Post reported that Ukraine's Kherson Counteroffensive Major General Andrey Kovalchuk had admitted to plotting the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam at some point in the future, presumably meaning now.
The Post reported that Kovalchuk had "considered flooding the river," and that Ukraine had "even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka Dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper's water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages."
"The test was a success," the Post added, quoting Kovalchuk, "but the step remained a last resort. He held off."
All of this sure sounds like Ukraine just self-sabotaged itself while blaming Russia for the alleged "attack." And as usual, the corporate media is siding with Ukraine's version of events and blaming Russia as well, even though all signs point to this being an inside job.
(Related: What will become of Western civilization after the Russia-Ukraine conflict comes to an end?)
Will the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant suffer a meltdown due to lost cooling water from Kakhovka Reservoir?
The Post's use of the phrase "the step remained a last resort" in reference to Kovalchuk's admissions that Kiev was possibly planning to blow up the Kakhovka Dam itself is even more compelling in light of the fact that the first phase of Kiev's NATO-backed counteroffensive this week completely failed, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense.
"Just like Ukraine launched its proxy invasion of Russia in late May to distract from its loss in the Battle of Artyomovsk, so too does it seem to have gone through with Kovalchuk's planned war crime to distract from this most recent embarrassment as well," reported Zero Hedge about the matter.
If it is really true that the first phase of Kiev's counteroffensive failed miserably, then the risk of it ruining the entire campaign was probably too great to not see Kovalchuk's "last resort" put into play on the fly, resulting in the Kakhovka Dam getting blasted.
Why would Ukraine want to blow up its own dam, you might be asking? The answer is that Russia controls the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which relies on water from the now-draining Kakhovka Reservoir for cooling. If all the water runs out of the reservoir, then Zaporozhye is toast.
Seeing how Zaporozhye is Europe's largest nuclear power facility, the subsequent risk of the facility suffering a Fukushima-style meltdown is not necessarily out of the question. What we are seeing is a major escalation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict that threatens nuclear fallout for large swaths of Europe, should Zaporozhye lose its cooling water.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, there is "no immediate nuclear safety risk" from any of this – but a latent one cannot necessarily be ruled out, should things degrade any further.
Another strategic reason why Kiev may have destroyed its own dam is because the regions now being flooded by all that escaping water are divided between Kiev and Moscow, which could complicate Russia's defensive plans along the left bank of the Dnieper River.
"Taken together with the consequences connected to the first scenario, this means that a significant part of the riparian front behind the LOC could soon soften up to facilitate the next phase of Kiev's counteroffensive," reports warn.
The latest news about the situation in Ukraine can be found at UkraineWitness.com.
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