Who Blew Up the Kakhovka Dam and Why?
In the night from June 5-6, 2023, the Russian-controlled Kakhovka dam at the south shore of the Dnieper/Dnipro river between the Ukrainian and Russian front lines was blown up. Seismic data suggests that the attack occurred at 2:54am local time:
The dam is or was used to power the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station. Footage of an attack on the dam can be seen below:
I write “an” and not “the” attack since some have also suggested that “This video is apparently from a strike on the dam last year.”
1. An Initial Damage Report
An initial damage report plus an analysis of how Ukraine could have done it (Russia could obviously have done it with explosives):
The massive hole in the dam:
Some finer details:
2. The Illegality of the Attack
As could be expected, Ukrainians and Westerners blamed Russia, just like Russia blamed Ukrainians for the attack that contravenes articles from the Geneva Convention:
Article 15 — Protection of works and installations containing dangerous forces
Works or installations containing dangerous forces, namely dams, dykes and nuclear electrical generating stations, shall not be made the object of attack, even where these objects are military objectives, if such attack may cause the release of dangerous forces and consequent severe losses among the civilian population.
Article 56 — Protection of works and installations containing dangerous forces
1. Works or installations containing dangerous forces, namely dams, dykes and nuclear electrical generating stations, shall not be made the object of attack, even where these objects are military objectives, if such attack may cause the release of dangerous forces and consequent severe losses among the civilian population. Other military objectives located at or in the vicinity of these works or installations shall not be made the object of attack if such attack may cause the release of dangerous forces from the works or installations and consequent severe losses among the civilian population.
Article 51 — Protection of the civilian population
4. Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited.
5. Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate:
(b) an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
Let us now sift through and analyse the evidence to see which side is more likely to have conducted the attack. The usual cui bono or “who profits (more)” considerations apply also in this case.
3. 2022 Statements by the Ukrainian General Kovalchuk Strongly Suggest Ukrainian Perpetratorship
In the runup to the attacks and on October 21, 2022, Reuters published an article titled “Factbox: Is the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine about to be blown?” with the following content:
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DAM
* The dam, 30 metres (yards) tall and 3.2 km (2 miles) long, was built in 1956 on the Dnipro river as part of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant.
* It holds an 18 km3 reservoir which also supplies water to the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, and to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which is also under Russian control.
* The volume of water in the reservoir is about equal to the Great Salt Lake in the U.S. state of Utah.
* Blowing the Soviet-era dam, which is controlled by Russia, would unleash a wall of devastating floodwater across much of the Kherson region which Russia last month proclaimed as annexed in the face of a Ukrainian advance.
* Destroying the Kakhovka hydro-electric power plant would also add to Ukraine’s energy woes after weeks of Russian missile strikes aimed at generation and grid facilities which Kyiv said have damaged a third of its country-wide power network.
ALLEGATIONS
* Sergei Surovikin, the commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, said on Tuesday he had information that Ukrainian forces were preparing a massive strike on the dam and had already used U.S.-supplied HIMARS missiles of a major strike, he said, could be a disaster.
“We have information on the possibility of the Kyiv regime using prohibited methods of war in the area of the city of Kherson, on the preparation by Kyiv of a massive missile strike on the Kakhovka hydro-electric dam,” Surovikin said.
Ukrainian officials said the allegation was a sign that Moscow planned to attack the dam and blame Kyiv.
* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday that Russia had mined the dam and was preparing to blow it, a step he compared to the use of weapons of mass destruction.
Russia in turn presented a statement to the UN about Kiev’s intentions to blow up the dam:
This means that, so far, we are at an impasse where both parties point the accusing finger at each other.
However, as a public declaration of Ukrainian intent and as confirmation of Russia’s claims, there was the following December 29, 2022 Washington Post article which contains statements by the Ukrainian Major-General Andriy Trokhymovych Kovalchuk about how Ukrainian forces consider attacking the “Nova Kakhovka Dam” as a “last resort” and to “stymie Russian crossings” across the river Dnipro and to the West of the dam:
And that in turn strongly suggests Ukrainian perpetratorship.
4. Ukrainian Counteroffensive Plans Suggest Ukrainian Perpetratorship
The WaPo article also outlines how the Ukrainian forces considered a counteroffensive in the Russia-controlled Zaporizhzhia Oblast or province to the immediate West of the Donetsk Oblast and to cut off the Russian land bridge to Crimea — something that could be helped by draining the water in the Dnipro river through blowing up the Kakhova Dam:
At the time, the Ukrainians were considering a far broader counteroffensive across the entire southern front, including a drive to the coast in the Zaporizhzhia region that would sever Moscow’s coveted “land bridge” connecting mainland Russia with Crimea, which was illegally annexed in 2014.
In a room full of maps and spreadsheets, the Ukrainians ran their own “tabletop exercise,” describing the order of battle — what formations they would use, where the units would go and in what sequence — and the likely Russian response. (sect. IV)
The billionaire ‘philanthropist’ George Soros who is known for not being friendly with Russia as well as for helping to orchestrate one or the other color revolution, including in Ukraine, agreed with that in his June 6, 2023, Project Syndicate article:
I believe the counterattack will be successful. The target will be the Crimean Peninsula, the home base of the Russian Navy. By destroying the already damaged land bridge with Russia, Ukraine could turn a strategic asset into a strategic liability, because Crimea has no water. With the land bridge destroyed, Crimea will depend on Ukraine for water.
To quote from Chebureki Man who linked the article in a tweet:
From a cui bono perspective, this in turn also suggests Ukrainian perpetratorship.
5. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant Situation
A comparatively minor indicator of perpetratorship are cui bono considerations regarding the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant at the Russia-controlled south bank of the Dnipro river. From the February 28, 2023 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article “One year later, new dangers threaten Ukraine’s embattled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant”:
Nearly a year after Russia’s March 4, 2022 seizure of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine, the facility remains in a precarious state. The site has endured fire, structural damage, and five temporary losses of all offsite power as the result of shelling, and the grid connection remains fragile. Unprecedented attempts by Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to create a “safety and security protection zone” around the plant have so far been unsuccessful. And now events many miles away from Zaporizhzhia are posing an additional threat to critical aspects of its operations, reinforcing the need for urgent actions to ensure its safety as fighting intensifies.
Like most nuclear plants, the six-reactor Zaporizhzhia facility is situated near a body of water that serves as its ultimate heat sink (UHS), an assured supply of water to its “essential service water system” that enables removal of the radioactive decay heat from shutdown reactors and spent fuel pools. That water system is also used to cool equipment such as the emergency diesel generators needed to provide electrical power when offsite power is lost. (It’s important to note that the essential service water system is distinct from the residual heat removal system that provides cooling directly to the fuel in the reactors in cold shutdown. The residual heat removal system, a closed loop, transfers heat from the reactor cores through heat exchangers to the essential service water system, which then carries the heat away to the UHS.)
At Zaporizhzhia, the water supply for the UHS is provided to cooling ponds from the Kakhovka Reservoir, 80 miles downstream of the plant on the Dnipro River. But in recent weeks, reports indicated that the reservoir’s water level had decreased and stood at 13.98 meters on February 15, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Petro Kotin, the president of Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear utility Energoatom, said that if the reservoir level drops below 12.8 meters, then Zaporizhzhia will face an emergency; below 12 meters the situation would become “critical.” If the water level gets too low, then the cooling ponds themselves will not be replenished, and the essential service water system will fail. (Ukraine has accused Russian forces controlling the reservoir dam of draining its water, although, as is typical in this conflict, Russian authorities have denied responsibility and blamed Ukrainian forces for the drop in water levels.)
From the June 6, 2023 Guardian article “Ukrainian dam collapse ‘no immediate risk’ to Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant” right after the attack:
The collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam and the draining of the reservoir behind it does not pose an immediate safety threat to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant further upstream, but will have long-term implications for its future, according to Ukrainian and UN experts.
The Ukrainian nuclear energy corporation, Energoatom, put out a statement on the Telegram social media platform saying the situation at the plant, the biggest nuclear power station in Europe, was “under control”.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, said in a statement: “our current assessment is that there is no immediate risk to the safety of the plant.”
But there are long-term concerns, both over safety and the possibility of the plant becoming operational again in the coming years. Oleksiy, a former reactor operator and shift supervisor at the plant, pointed out that all six reactors had been shut down since the plant found itself on the frontline after the Russian invasion.
Five of the reactors are in “cold shutdown”, turned off completely and being cooled, and one is in “hot shutdown”, kept at 200–250C so it would be easier to restart if conditions allowed, and to supply winter heating to the neighbouring town of Energodar.
So in other words: Neither the US-Ukrainian nor the Russian side would be particularly hurt or benefitting from sabotaging the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant by lowering the water levels through blowing up the. It could however be argued that it would damage the Russian south more than the further away Ukrainian north, thereby allowing for a minor argument for Ukrainian perpetratorship over Russian perpetratorship.
What is perhaps more remarkable about the Zhaporizhzhia nuclear plant is the immensely stupid Ukrainian propaganda line that, completely contrary to any logic, the Russians supposedly shelled a power plant which they themselves control, in their own controlled territory and while their own soldiers are there!
To for instance quote from the May 30, 2023, CBS article “U.N. nuclear chief urges Russia and Ukraine to ban attacks at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant” which works with the classic propaganda tool of bothsidesing a clearly one-sided issue of Ukrainian attacks on the Russian-controlled power plant:
Ukraine’s U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya accused Russia of continuing “to actively use the nuclear plant for military purposes.” He said Russia has mined its perimeter and is responsible for shelling that has inflicted “serious damage” on parts of the plant, undermining its safety. He claimed 500 Russian military personnel are at the plant along with heavy weapons, munitions and explosives.
Unfortunately for US-Ukrainian propaganda efforts, that propaganda tale goes against any logic, including military logic (see sect. 8), which is why it can be rather safely dismissed as the outrageously stupid propaganda tale that it most likely is.
6. The Projected Flooding
Another in my view comparatively minor argument for Ukrainian over Russian perpetratorship can be drawn from the projected flooding which may have a worse effect on the Russian-controlled south than on the Ukrainian-controlled north of the Dnipro:
But it is also one of the comparatively weaker arguments and one that I do not want to spend that much time and effort on.
7. The Crimea Water Supply Situation Strongly Suggests Ukrainian Perpetratorship
Instead, I would like to advance the probably strongest argument for Ukrainian over Russian perpetratorship, which is that blowing up the dam massively sabotages the water supply to the Russian-controlled Crimea. Below is a map of the water supply line from the Kakhovka dam to Crimea:
Furthermore, note how
Ukraine shut down the canal in 2014 soon after Russia annexed Crimea. Russia restored the flow of water in March 2022 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
A 2015 study found that the canal had been providing 85% of Crimea’s water prior to the 2014 shutdown. Of the water from the canal, 72% went to agriculture and 10% to industry, while water for drinking and other public uses made up 18%.
As such, restoring and protecting the water supply to Russian-controlled Crimea understandably had high priority:
In terms of cui bono, the blowing up of Kakhovka dam can therefore be very clearly attributed to Ukraine and not to Russia which had fought long and hard to restore and to secure the water supply to Crimea.
To conclude with another relevant tweet in this regard:
In that we have the probably strongest argument for Ukrainian over Russian perpetratorship.
8. Military Logic and Ukraine Getting Increasingly Desperate Strongly Suggest Ukrainian Perpetratorship
Another strong argument for Ukrainian perpetratorship can be derived from general military logic. One of military logic’s general principles for instance is that:
Premise 1: You attack whatever ‘the enemy’ controls but not what you yourself control.
There are exceptions to that such as that you might attack and destroy what you control in light of an advancing enemy and so that the enemy cannot have it (“scorched earth”). But aside from such exceptions, the above principle generally applies, and it would also appear to apply in this case, as for instance pointed out in this tweet:
As the next true and more specific premise, we insert that
Premise 2: It was and is not Ukraine but Russia which controlls or controlled the Zaporizhzhia power plant on the south shore of the Dnipro river and at the time of the attack.
And to the best of my current understanding, it was also the case that
Premise 3: There were no advancing Ukrainian forces towards the power plant and hence no need for the Russian forces to blow it up in some scorched earth maneuver or to stop a Ukrainian advance.
And this leads to the pretty straightforward and abductively inferred complementary conclusions that
Conclusion 1: Therefore, it does not make much sense to think that the Russians blew up the Russian-controlled Kakhovka dam.
Conclusion 2: Therefore and probably, it was instead the hostile Ukrainians which attacked and blew up the Russian-controlled Kakhovka dam (because 1) it opens up possibilities for a counterattack in Zaporizhzhia oblast and due to lower water levels, 2) such a potential false flag could lead to renewed support for Ukraine and to more negative effects on Russia 3) it could be a Ukrainian scorched earth manuever and due to the realization that they will most likely not get back the lost territories).
A Ukrainian perpetratorship is all the more likely to be true in light of the statements of Kovalchuk (sect. 3) and Danilov (sect. 7).
Furthermore, another principle of military logic is that
Premise 1: If a side is losing but decides to keep fighting the war, then it typically uses increasingly desperate measures — such as blowing up a dam and trying to sell it as a false flag attack where the perpetratorship is falsely attributed to the enemy.
Premise 2: Measured by various typical parameters of military success and failure such as territorial gains and losses or troop injuries and deaths, the Ukrainian side is losing and the Russian side is winning — for instance by making territorial gains and thereby establishing and holding a land bridge to Crimea.
Geroman also shared some insights into that:
Conclusion: Therefore, it is much more likely the losing Ukrainian side which resorted to increasingly desperate and self-damaging measures such as blowing up a dam and trying to pin the blame on Russia.
Later reports confirmed that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is not going anywhere indeed:
So it is also from such general military logic that strong arguments for Ukrainian over Russian perpetratorship can be derived.
9. Western Transatlanticist Politicians and Propagandists Wildly Accusing Russia Strongly Suggests Ukrainian Perpetratorship
Yet another strong argument for Ukrainian over Russian perpetratorship can be derived from the US empire propaganda network blaming Russia in a coordinated effort and without even bothering to present evidence or arguments for the politically preordained conclusion that ‘Russia/Putin did it.’
As a European, I will focus on the transatlanticist US empire propaganda network in a Europe and a EU which exist deeply within the US empire’s sphere of influence and which are accordingly massively co-opted and controlled by the US empire. I will also share tweets by a host of Tweeters which intelligently refute that Western propaganda.
9.1 German Political Propagandists
Nazi Germany was notably the nation which attacked Russia and the Soviet Union in WW2. In light of that historical context, let us perhaps begin with official Germany’s one-sided propaganda attacks by easily one of the dumbest European politicians in the form of the Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock:
The following tweeter illustrates a very important principle that I also use for the conclusion of Ukrainian over Russian perpetratorship:
From the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and on the rejection of his US empire serving propaganda effort:
9.2 Ukrainian Political Propagandists
From the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba:
Volodimir Zelenskiy at least managed to give an explanation and argument for why it supposedly could only have been the Russians:
Russia has been controlling the dam and the entire Kakhovka HPP for more than a year. It is physically impossible to blow it up somehow from the outside, by shelling. It was mined by the Russian occupiers. And they blew it up.
Russia has detonated a bomb of mass environmental destruction. This is the largest man-made environmental disaster in Europe in decades. It is the most dangerous terrorist in the world. And that is why Russia’s defeat — a defeat that we’ll ensure anyway — will be the most significant contribution to the security of our region, our Europe and the entire world.
However, don’t we know what constantly fuels Russian revanchism? This is the belief of Russia’s rulers that Europe will allegedly show weakness. Weakness is the main hope and bet of terrorists.
No more weakness in Europe against the evil of aggression! No more uncertainty about security prospects in Europe! Every step, decision and summit of ours must strengthen us all in our defense against Russian terror. No doubt, the Vilnius #NATOSummit must ensure this.
I said this addressing the Bucharest Nine Summit.
Yet by the Ukrainian general Kuleba’s own admission, Ukraine was able to make “three holes” in the metal floodgate of the dam with HIMARS artillery months before the attack on Kakhovka dam (see section 3). From that and provided that they used even stronger or more suitable weapons, it follows that they most likely did have the means to blow up the dam. But Ukrainian and Western propagandists are not concerned by such ‘minor details’ in the telling of their rousing propaganda tale.
Also mind the mention of “ecocide” which we never hear about otherwise from these people:
Also mind the irony of it:
9.3 Estonian and Moldovian Political Propagandists
From the Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas:
From the Moldovian President Maia Sandu:
9.4 EU Political Propagandists
The linked NYT article is a most interesting one, for it sheds light into fairly common Ukrainian practices of flooding their land or otherwise destroying their own infrastructure in order to hamper the Russian forces:
All around Demydiv, a village north of Kyiv, residents have been grappling with the aftermath of a severe flood, which under ordinary circumstances would have been yet another misfortune for a people under attack by Russia.
This time, though, it was a tactical victory. The Ukrainians flooded the village intentionally, along with a vast expanse of fields and bogs around it, creating a quagmire that thwarted a Russian tank assault on Kyiv and bought the army precious time to prepare defenses.
The residents of Demydiv paid the price in the rivers of dank green floodwater that engulfed many of their homes. And they couldn’t be more pleased.
“Everybody understands and nobody regrets it for a moment,” said Antonina Kostuchenko, a retiree, whose living room is now a musty space with waterlines a foot or so up the walls.
“We saved Kyiv!” she said with pride.
[…]
What happened in Demydiv was not an outlier. Since the war’s early days, Ukraine has been swift and effective in wreaking havoc on its own territory, often by destroying infrastructure, as a way to foil a Russian army with superior numbers and weaponry.
Demydiv was flooded when troops opened a nearby dam and sent water surging into the countryside. Elsewhere in Ukraine, the military has, without hesitation, blown up bridges, bombed roads and disabled rail lines and airports. The goal has been to slow Russian advances, channel enemy troops into traps and force tank columns onto less favorable terrain.
So far, more than 300 bridges have been destroyed across Ukraine, the country’s minister of infrastructure, Oleksandr Kubrakov, said. When the Russians tried to take a key airport outside Kyiv on the first day of the invasion, Ukrainian forces shelled the runway, leaving them pockmarked with craters and unable to receive planeloads of Russian special forces.
The scorched-earth policy played an important role in Ukraine’s success in holding off Russian forces in the north and preventing them from capturing Kyiv, the capital, military experts said.
But transatlanticist EU trash such as the President of the European Council Charles Michel are unfortunately undeterred by such evidence. Instead, they are nothing but useful idiots for the US empire and consequently keep spouting evidence-free US empire propaganda such as the following:
The same goes for the Vice-President of the European Commission and the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell, who does not want to let truth from the ‘jungle’ disturb the great ‘garden’ of the EU either:
9.5 Mainstream and ‘Alternative’ Media Propagandists
The trashy Bild came out with propaganda guns blazing before considering that it just might be smarter to scale down on propaganda a little bit and in light of the lack of or even contradictory evidence:
The ‘alternative’ medium Democracy Now which has been routinely regurgitating US empire propaganda for years now in some critical cases did even worse than the mainstream Bild:
9.6 ‘Expert’ Propagandists
This also brings us to propaganda by totally not biased and bought ‘experts.’ One rather crude and cheerleading Ukraine ‘expert’ is Paul Massaro, a self-described “foreign policy fella.” “Fella” is a clear indication of his allegiance to NAFO, the North Atlantic Fella Organisation which is a US-Ukrainian intelligence project designed to drum up support for Ukraine and to troll Russia and Putin with some ‘cool’ dog and Shiba Inu memes and “agitprop” (i.e. agitatory propaganda) in general:
Once again, the replies to such US-Ukrainian war propaganda are far more interesting because in this case they reveal that the US empire itself had committed the war crime of attacking a dam in Syria in 2017:
To quote from the January 21, 2022, Middle East Eye article “US targeted Syria dam it claimed was on ‘no strike’ list: Report”:
A US military unit reportedly targeted a dam in Syria in 2017 that was controlled by the Islamic State group (IS), despite the structure being on a “no-strike list” given that flooding could put the lives of tens of thousands at risk, The New York Times has reported.
Two former US officials told the newspaper in a report published on Thursday that the secretive Task Force 9 unit carried out the attack on the Tabqa Dam on 6 March 2017, which ripped through five storeys of the 18-storey structure and caused a large fire that destroyed essential equipment. The three employees who rushed to the scene were killed in a subsequent strike by US-led coalition forces.
At the time, IS, Russia and Syria all blamed the US for the strike, but the commander of the US offensive in Syria, then Lieutenant-General Stephen J Townsend, emphatically denied the accusation, saying that “the Tabqa Dam is not a coalition target”.
The two former US officials who spoke to the Times said the strike was carried out using at least one BLU-109 bunker-buster bomb, which is designed to destroy such concrete structures.
An internal military report had warned that striking the dam would cause flooding that could impact the hundreds of thousands of civilians living in the valley below and place the lives of tens of thousands of civilians at risk, the Times reported.
“Using a 2,000-pound bomb against a restricted target like a dam is extremely difficult and should have never been done on the fly,” Scott F Murray, a retired Air Force colonel who planned air strikes during campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo, told the Times.
“Worst case, those munitions could have absolutely caused the dam to fail.”
Dam workers examining the scene found an unexploded BLU-109 that could have caused the dam to fail, experts said.
‘Unimaginable destruction’
Responding to the NYT’s reporting, US Central Command confirmed dropping three 2,000-pound bombs but denied targeting the dam or employing procedural shortcuts to do so.
“Analysis had confirmed that strikes on the towers attached to the dam were not considered likely to cause structural damage to the Tabqa Dam itself,” Central Command spokesman Bill Urban told the Times in a statement. Noting that the dam did not collapse, he added: “That analysis has proved accurate.”
But the former officials said that the strike caused significantly more damage than Central Command indicated.
Engineers who worked at the dam said that a much greater disaster was avoided thanks to the quick work of dam employees at the scene, much of which was carried out under gunpoint.
“The destruction would have been unimaginable,” a former director at the dam told the newspaper.
“The number of casualties would have exceeded the number of Syrians who have died throughout the war.”
The New York Times’ report comes a month after the paper revealed that the US military covered up a covert army cell that repeatedly killed Syrian civilians during the campaign against IS.
So we not only have a Ukrainian general on record saying that they did a test attack on Kakhovka dam in which they damaged the floodgates, but furthermore an instance of the Ukrainian puppetmasters, the US empire, attacking a dam in Syria. (Il)logical conclusion: ‘Therefore Russia/Putin did it.’
In the meantime, Massaro is trying his luck with repetition like the deranged NAFO propagandist that he is:
An even worse tweet of Massaro indicates that he is a hatemongering piece of human garbage who celebrated the death of a Russian civilian on holidays:
Some others who are completely out of their league and whose expertise lies elsewhere entirely unfortunately also do not have anything better to do than to uncritically regurgitate the US-Ukrainian propaganda narrative:
That rather illogical conclusion was also proposed by the much more subtle and balanced propagandist, Soviet Union expert and University professor Dr. Gerhard Mangott from my own country Austria:
“The deliberate destruction of the Nova Khakovka dam by, in all probability, the Russian army is a war crime.”
What is remarkable about that conclusion of Mangott is that he is well aware of at least some key evidence for a Ukrainian perpetratorship but that, without offering reasons or logic, he goes with the US empire imposed and career-furthering ‘Russia/Putin did it’ propanda narrative anyway and in stark contradiction to where the evidence points (= ‘balance’):
This confused not only me but also some logic-employing and hence incredulous commentators such as one Jochen Mitschka who, in light of the thusly created water supply problems for Russia-controlled Crimea, points out how illogical it is to assume or to conclude that ‘Russia/Putin did it’:
The thusly cornered Mangott replies with some illogical but truthful information that does not refute but rather confirms the hypothesis of Ukrainian perpetratorship before getting logically check-mated by Jochen Mitschka:
I allow myself to point out the following in support of Mitschka and Ukrainian perpetratorship (the translation makes it sound awkward):
The very mature move of the great ‘expert’ propagandist Mangott after a) I confronted him with his logical errors, b) gave him a chance to reply and after he c) in no way defended himself and d) was neither able nor willing to point out to me a single serious mistake that I had made:
Note furthermore how Mangott’s move of evading the issue when cornered by evidence and logic is identical to the move of official US empire propagandists such as the ‘press speaker’ and ‘National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications’ John Kirby:
Conclusion
Someone who uses evidence-based logic, makes sense and who accordingly does not work for mainstream media anymore either is Tucker Carlson, the biggest conservative news superstar who often enough does raise critical questions about the US empire and its allies or vassals such as Ukraine and whose videos accordingly have record-breaking numbers of views. I will let Carlson do the conclusion of this article by quoting from his Twitter video which, also due to that often amiss quality, garnered more than 50 million views in about 24 hours:
Tucker Carlson: The question is: “Who did it?” Well, let’s see: The Kakhovka Dam was effectively Russian. It was built by the Russian government, and it currently sits in Russian-controlled territory. The dam’s reservoir supplies water to Crimea which has been, for the last 240 years, home of the Russian Black Sea fleet.
Blowing up the dam may be bad for Ukraine, but it hurts Russia more. And for precisely that reason, the Ukrainian government has considered destroying it. In December, the Washington Post quoted a Ukrainian general saying his men had fired American-made rockets [rather: HIMARS artillery shells] at the dam’s floodgate, as a test strike.
So really once the facts start coming in, it becomes much less of a mystery what might have happened to the dam. Any fair person would conclude that the Ukrainians probably blew it up — just as you would assume they [rather: the USA and/or NATO allies] blew up Nordstream, the Russian natural gas pipeline, last fall. (0:25–1:18)
[on breath- and mindless mainstream media ‘Russia/Putin did it!’-propaganda:]
No one who’s paid to cover these things seemed to entertain even the possibility it could have been the Ukrainians who did it — no chance of that. (2:23–2:31)
So much for how and why it was most likely the US puppet Ukraine and not Russia which blew up the Kakhovka Dam in what would amount to a false flag attack.
***
EDIT: After having written the above about the relevance of Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald tweeted the following in confirmation:
And as if to confirm the above, the increasingly irrelevant Brian Stelter from increasingly irrelevant CNN tweets this and receives an astonishing 471 likes:
In the meantime and about a mere 10 hours later, Tucker Carlson’s explosive video went to beyond 84 million views and 669.000 likes, thereby cementing just how irrelevant the Brian Stelters and mainstream media of this world are by comparison:
