Kakhovkaya Dam - Kremlin Lies
The Russians initially denied the fact of the explosion, then moved on to the traditional accusations against Ukraine. Around 3 a.m., when explosions broke out at the HPP, the head of the Russian occupation administration of Nova Kakhovka, Vladimir Leontiev, urgently came out with a “refutation.” His statement that everything was “quiet and calm” in the city was published by the federal news agency RIA Novosti. Around 7 a.m., Leontiev reported a “series of strikes” on the Kakhovka HPP that resulted in an “uncontrolled discharge of water.” Telegram channels of the Russian “war correspondents” reported the “strike of the Armed Forces” as early as 3 a.m. After Leontiev’s statement, the Kremlin’s entire propaganda machine switched to this version, with some variations.
Putin’s spokesman Peskov rejected the accusations against Russia and said that the sabotage was allegedly committed by Ukraine due to the fact that its “counter-offensive is over.”
The “version” voiced by Peskov became one of the key ones, but not the only one. Russian propagandists, as usual, posted several statements in the information field, which should simultaneously explain to Russians that the blow-up of the HPP was allegedly “beneficial to the Ukrainians,” but at the same time harmed Ukraine, and not the Russian military in the occupied territory. War correspondents, Z-bloggers, anonymous Telegram channels explained the reasons for the “Ukrainian attack”:
- distracting attention from the lack of success at the front (variation: due to the failure of the counteroffensive);
- an attempt to destroy Russian fortifications and minefields on the eve of the counterattack;
- an attempt to create problems with water, provoke a food crisis and environmental catastrophe in the occupied territories, in particular in Crimea;
- an attempt to garner stronger support from the West by accusing Russia of environmental crimes.
The propagandists did not have a single version of the technical part: Z-bloggers wrote with the same confidence about the missile strike, MLRS, and the consequences of shelling with HIMARS in 2022, and the deliberate raising of the water level by Ukrainians for additional pressure on the dam.
Russian military bloggers reported that Ukraine blew up the Kakhovka dam, triggering flooding that will wash away Russian positions on the left bank of Dnipro and allow a Ukrainian amphibious assault. The Washington Post (WaPo) in late December 2022 extended credence to the Kremlin’s version of events. Titled “Inside the Ukrainian counteroffensive that shocked Putin and reshaped the war”, its journalists quoted former commander of November’s Kherson Counteroffensive Major General Andrey Kovalchuk who admitted to planning this act:
“Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, 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, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort. He held off.”
Among the “calming” messages, the following can be distinguished: the Russian military did not suffer, the destruction only harmed the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine; the threat to the civilian population in the occupied territories is exaggerated, there will be no major evacuation. The promotion of the second statement was entrusted to representatives of the occupation administrations, in particular the above-mentioned Leontiev and the so-called “head” of Kherson Oblast Vladimir Saldo. The victorious statements about the successes of the Russian military against the backdrop of the flooding of the territories were issued by the war correspondents and the odious member of the State Duma Aleksey Zhuravlyov.
Russian top propagandists and pseudo-Ukrainian anonymous Telegram channels joined the promotion of the conspiracy theory that the explosion at the HPP was “a new Bucha that Ukraine needs to strengthen support from the West.” Messages with “arguments” were posted by “Resident,” “Legitimny,” channels of Vladimir Solovyov, Sergey Mardan, and other propaganda resources.
The Kremlin characterized the Nova Kakhovka hydroelectric dam incident as a “barbaric act” ordered “at the suggestion of [Kiev’s] Western curators,” and a calamity which has unleashed a “large-scale environmental and human disaster.” Russia, which had born an equal share of the direct fallout of the flooding, plus the prospects of the loss of water in the North Crimean Canal and cooling water for the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, claimed that Kiev had been attacking the Kakhovka hydroplant and its environs for well over a year before Tuesday morning’s fatal blow.
Russia circulated a letter to the United Nations UN Security Council, emphasizing the need to stop Ukraine from staging a provocation at the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant, Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya said at a UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine 22 October 2022. "The Zelensky regime is taking advantage of the license to commit any kind of crime issued by its Western sponsors in order to persistently target civilian infrastructure facilities located on its former territories. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have been shelling the city of Novaya Kakhovka in the Kherson Region for five months. They fire up to 120 rockets every day, mostly using US-made HIMARS systems and deliberately targeting the Kakhovka dam as they seek to destroy it to make the water level rise and flood nearby areas. If such a scenario is implemented, thousands of civilians may die and thousands of homes will be damaged. Today, we circulated a letter to the UN Security Council, calling on the UN leadership to prevent this heinous provocation," Nebenzya stressed.
Various Russian sources [TASS, RIA Novosti, etc] reported that "Around 2 am on June 6, the Kakhovskaya HPP was subjected to numerous attacks from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which led to the destruction of the valves. As a result, water from the reservoir began to be discharged uncontrollably.... Ukrainian troops once again shelled the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station. The cyclopean structure, built by our ancestors, could not withstand the many months of attacks by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Surface structures and the engine room were destroyed, the dam was broken. "
Press secretary of the head of state Dmitry Peskov told reporters "We officially declare: here we are clearly talking about a deliberate sabotage by the Ukrainian side, which was planned and carried out by order from Kiev, from the Kiev regime. And all responsibility for all the consequences must bear the Kiev regime," he stressed, commenting on such accusations against Russia.
In the first episode of his new show Tucker on Twitter, Carlson expressed the opinion that Kyiv was responsible for the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station. "Once the facts come out, there's much less mystery about what could have happened to the dam. Any honest person would come to the conclusion that the Ukrainians most likely blew it up," he said.
Venturing further into uncharted territories, Carlson raised the question of recent UFO revelations and allegations of hidden technology gleaned from extraterrestrial wreckage. While his willingness to entertain such topics was perhaps commendable from a free speech perspective, a healthy measure of skepticism seems warranted, given the complete lack of solid evidence and the risk of such strange subjects detracting from urgent terrestrial issues.
For more than six months, Ukrainian troops were deliberately preparing to destroy the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station, and by a "strange coincidence" before the last blow, for some reason, the water level in the Kakhovka reservoir was raised by one and a half meters. This was stated on 08 June 2023 by the Russian-appointed head of the administration of Nova Kakhovka Vladimir Leontiev.
"Drones overflights were carried out - they knew perfectly well where each HIMARS missile hit (an American multiple launch rocket system supplied to Kiev by Western allies - TASS note), they knew the state of the hydroelectric power station, and it was on the vulnerable areas that the final blow was delivered. That is, [they] they were preparing and deliberately destroying the hydroelectric power station for more than six months.<...> And why was the water level increased by more than one and a half meters in the Kakhovka reservoir almost a day or two before that? - he said on the air of Channel One.
Leontiev said that the first shelling of Novaya Kakhovka by Ukrainian troops was on 11 June 2022, and mass shelling of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station began in July. "In August and September, they intensified significantly. As a result, the lock channel, the road surface were damaged - exactly the objects that were destroyed. <...> During the four months of last year, HIMARS, of course, "strengthened" the power, strength and structures Kakhovka HPP.<...> What happened was a consequence, it was the last straw," the Russian-appointed head of Novaya Kakhovka stressed.
Kyiv, by blowing up the dam of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station, carried out another planned terrorist attack, said Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev at a meeting 07 June 2023 with State Secretary of the Security Council of Belarus Alexander Volfovich.
"Blowing up the dam of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station is another planned terrorist attack by the Kiev regime aimed at destroying civilians and civilian infrastructure," Patrushev said, noting that the Ukrainian armed forces, on the instructions of the authorities, have been shelling Novaya Kakhovka for more than a year.
According to him, a day before the dam of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station was blown up, at the direction of Kyiv, water was discharged at the Dnepropetrovsk hydroelectric power station (DneproGES). "At the direction of Kiev, days earlier, a large-scale discharge of water was carried out at the Dneprohydroelectric power station, located upstream, and then another blow was struck at the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station, predetermining even more detrimental consequences of the flood," Patrushev said. The Kiev regime, he continued, is well aware of the danger posed to the population by the flooding of the lands of the Kherson region, the threat to the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, and the risk of the North Crimean Canal becoming shallow. "Ukrainian neo-Nazis achieve such results," Patrushev stated.
However, he noted, the meeting of the UN Security Council showed that "European countries support the war crimes of Ukrainian nationalists acting on the instructions of American curators." "It is known for certain that the coordination of the activities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is carried out by the United States, Britain and their NATO partners. Accordingly, they agreed to undermine and should be held responsible for this cynical act," the Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation emphasized.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, answering a question from the International Affairs magazine, stated in the West and in the UN Secretariat, no one remembers the repeated shelling of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station by Ukraine, which the Armed Forces of Ukraine have carried out since the summer of 2022.
"No one in the West - as well as in the UN Secretariat - remembers that the Ukrainian regime, starting from the summer of 2022, repeatedly fired at hydroelectric power plants using, among other things, American HIMARS MLRS and publicly flaunted their actions. We officially, even last in the fall, they drew the attention of the UN to the declared plans of the Kiev regime to destroy the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station, but the UN leadership looked around at the West, and the latter ordered not to react," the minister said.
The Russian-appointed head of the administration of the Kakhovka municipal district, Pavel Filipchuk, said that the destruction of the dam would not affect the situation with irrigation in the Kherson region, since the irrigation season had already been disrupted due to shelling by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. At the same time, the mayor of Nova Kakhovka said that the destruction of the station caused serious damage to the environment.
According to the head of the Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, there is a risk of the North Crimean Canal becoming shallow, but there are enough water reserves in the region. Oleg Kryuchkov, adviser to the head of the region, said that the water intake of the North Crimean Canal was not damaged. Press Secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov said that Crimea has developments in water supply without the North Crimean Canal.
Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN Vasily Nebenzya called the blowing up of the dam of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station an unthinkable crime of Kyiv. He called on the UN Secretary General to condemn the actions of Ukraine.
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