A dam can have floodgates to control the flow of water (and therefore the water level in the reservoir to a degree), not just a weir with a fixed elevation where water flows over the crest, so I suspect that you might confuse a dam with a weir. I read that a professor said this particular dam had 26 gates. If you expect a flood, you’d want to open the gates beforehand, as to make room in the reservoir, and to reduce the peak flow that an uncontrolled flood would give, for example.
Because they despise Ukraine? You have talking heads in Russian Media that openly call for genocide against people that fight for the Ukraine identity. During the war we have seen blatant incompetence that got compensated through pure cruelty and violence against civilians.
Yeah but then they couldn’t deny it. Like always, Russian propaganda seeks not to be convincing but to make people doubt everything. Now they can simply claim that it was Ukraine’s fault.
While I also doubt Russia blew up the dam (because I don’t really see a good reason for Russia to do so), I imagine that if the russians were behind it, they would have blown it up instead of just opening it, in order to be able to plausibly deny their involvement in the flooding. There could also have been technical reasons for doing so (maybe opening it wouldn’t have allowed the required flow for whatever goal they would have had?).
The counteroffensive appears to have fizzled even before the dam was blown up. Ukraine has great motivation to blame their failed offensive on the flooding.
Russia has the best motivations imo. They want to stall the counteroffensive which needs to cross the Dniepr.
Then why blow it up, and not open it?
Because they want to flood a lot quickly? They don’t just want to spill the overflow. Are you confusing dam and sluice?
A dam can have floodgates to control the flow of water (and therefore the water level in the reservoir to a degree), not just a weir with a fixed elevation where water flows over the crest, so I suspect that you might confuse a dam with a weir. I read that a professor said this particular dam had 26 gates. If you expect a flood, you’d want to open the gates beforehand, as to make room in the reservoir, and to reduce the peak flow that an uncontrolled flood would give, for example.
Because they despise Ukraine? You have talking heads in Russian Media that openly call for genocide against people that fight for the Ukraine identity. During the war we have seen blatant incompetence that got compensated through pure cruelty and violence against civilians.
We’ve also seen blatant genocide. Not just incompetence compensated, but targeted genocide.
I agree.
Very true
Yeah, but opening it has the same effect, or?
Yeah but then they couldn’t deny it. Like always, Russian propaganda seeks not to be convincing but to make people doubt everything. Now they can simply claim that it was Ukraine’s fault.
While I also doubt Russia blew up the dam (because I don’t really see a good reason for Russia to do so), I imagine that if the russians were behind it, they would have blown it up instead of just opening it, in order to be able to plausibly deny their involvement in the flooding. There could also have been technical reasons for doing so (maybe opening it wouldn’t have allowed the required flow for whatever goal they would have had?).
The counteroffensive appears to have fizzled even before the dam was blown up. Ukraine has great motivation to blame their failed offensive on the flooding.