Extract from ABC News
Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to bring down a Ukrainian dam that collapsed earlier this month while under Russian control, according to exclusive drone photos and information obtained by The Associated Press.
Key points:
- The collapse of Kakhovka Dam led to deadly flooding and widespread evacuations
- Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of destroying the dam
- The explosion was so strong it registered as Magnitude 2 on seismic monitors
Images taken from above the Kakhovka Dam and shared with the AP appear to show an explosive-laden car atop the structure.
Two officials also said Russian troops were stationed in a crucial area inside the dam where the Ukrainians said the explosion which destroyed it was centred.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The dam's destruction led to deadly flooding, endangered crops in the world's breadbasket, threatened drinking water supplies for thousands and unleashed an environmental catastrophe.
The death toll from the flooding has risen to 16 in Ukraine, Kyiv officials said, while Russian officials said 29 people have died in territories it controls.
More than 3,600 people have been evacuated from the flooded areas in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions, while 31 people were still missing and some 1,300 houses remained flooded.
Ukrainian commanders have said it also scuppered some of their plans to take Russian positions in a counteroffensive now in its early stages.
Each side has accused the other of destroying the dam, but the various Russian allegations — that it was hit by a missile or taken down by explosives — have failed to account for a blast so strong it registered on seismic monitors in the region.
Russia has benefited from the timing of the massive flooding that followed the explosion — though areas it occupies also experienced a deluge and the consequences may have been more extensive than expected.
In the region around the dam, the Dnieper River forms the front line between Russian and Ukrainian forces, with Russian ones in control of the dam itself.
Two Ukrainian commanders who had been in the area but at different locations told the AP the rising waters quickly swamped both their positions and Russian ones.
It also destroyed equipment, forcing them to start all over again with their planning and leaving them facing a much larger distance to cover, all in mud.
One spoke on condition of anonymity in order to reveal more frankly the extent of the problems caused by the rising waters.
"It's a regular practice, to mine (places) before a retreat," said the other, Illia Zelinskyi, commander of Bugskiy Gard.
"In this context, their actions were to disrupt some of our supply chains as well as complicate a crossing of the Dnieper for us."
The United Nations said Russia has "so far declined our request to access the areas under its temporary military control" after the dam burst.
"The UN will continue to engage to seek the necessary access. We urge the Russian authorities to act in accordance with their obligations under international humanitarian law," UN humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, Denise Brown, said in a statement.
"Aid cannot be denied to people who need it."
Dam built to withstand 'Dambuster' raids
In recent weeks, Ukraine's armed forces have reported limited gains in the beginnings of a counteroffensive to take back territory seized by the Russians since their invasion in February 2022.
Russian President Vladimir Putin himself indirectly acknowledged the advantage to his forces last week, although he maintained Russia's denials of responsibility: "This may sound weird, but nonetheless. Unfortunately, this disrupted their counteroffensive in that area."
Speaking before a meeting of military correspondents, he explained his use of the word "unfortunately" with bravado.
"It would have been better if they had attacked there," he said. "Better for us, because it would have ended very badly for them, attacking there."
Kakhovka is one of a series of Soviet-era dams along the Dnieper River that were built to withstand enormous force, amounting to thousands of pounds of explosives.
They were constructed in the wake of the infamous World War II "Dambusters" raids that destroyed German dams.
Taking out the Möhne dam in 1943, for instance, required five 4.5-ton, specially made "bouncing bombs," according to the Imperial War Museum archives.
Ukraine is not believed to possess any single missile with that kind of power.
Sidharth Kaushal, a researcher with the London-based Royal United Services Institute, said the Ukrainians were not believed to have any missiles with a payload greater than about 500 kilograms.
Nor did it seem credible that Ukrainian commandos could have sneaked in thousands of pounds of explosives to blow the dam, which was completely controlled inside and out by Russian soldiers for months.
As recently as the day before the structure's June 6 collapse, Russians had set up a firing position inside the dam's crucial machine room, where Ukrhydroenergo, the agency that runs the dam system, said the explosion originated.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said as early as October 2022 that the dam was mined.
Commander Zelinskyi, who is not related to the Ukrainian president, confirmed the explosion seemed to come from the area where the machine room was located.
He and an American official familiar with the intelligence both confirmed Russian forces had been ensconced there for some time.
The American spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive material.
The Institute for the Study of War, an American think tank that has monitored Russian actions in Ukraine since the war began, has assessed "the balance of evidence, reasoning, and rhetoric suggests that the Russians deliberately damaged the dam."
Drone footage shows Russian soldiers and seemingly rigged car
In the days leading up to the single explosion, Ukrainian military drone videos showed dozens of Russian soldiers encamped on a bank of the Dnieper, relaxed as they walked back and forth to the dam with no cover — suggesting their confidence in their control of the area and especially the dam, which was strategically crucial.
The photos, taken from Ukrainian drone footage, obtained by the AP and dated May 28, showed a car parked on the dam.
Its roof had been neatly cut open to reveal enormous barrels, one with what appears to be a land mine attached to the lid and a cable running toward the Russian-held side of the river.
It's not clear how long the car remained.
A Ukrainian special forces communications official, who also noted the car appeared to be rigged, said he believed the purpose of that was twofold: to stop any Ukrainian advance on the dam and to amplify the planned explosion originating in the machine room and destroy the top of the dam.
The car bomb itself would not have been enough to bring down the dam. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to preserve operational secrecy.
The explosion detected at 2.54am local time registered on Norwegian seismic monitors at nearly magnitude 2.
By comparison, a catastrophic explosion at Beirut's port that killed scores of people and caused widespread destruction registered at a 3.3 on the seismic scale and involved at least 500 tons of explosives.
"That means it's a significant explosion," said Anne Strømmen Lycke, CEO of the Norwegian earthquake monitoring agency NORSAR.
Within a few minutes, water from the Kakhovka reservoir began cascading through the shattered dam, submerging the river's sand bar islands and flooding much of southern Ukraine, including Russian-controlled territory.
Immediately after the dam's collapse, some experts noted the structure was in disrepair, which could have led to the breach.
But the area most obviously in disrepair, a section of roadbed near the edge where Russian forces had detonated explosives to block a Ukrainian offensive last fall, was still intact days after most of the rest of the dam collapsed.
Ukraine's intelligence service released an intercepted conversation it said was between a Russian soldier and someone else in which the soldier said "our sabotage groups were there.
"They wanted to create a scare with the dam. It didn't quite go according to plan."
Rescuers brave snipers in Russian-occupied flood zones
In the chaotic early days of flooding, Ukrainian rescue workers in private boats provided a lifeline to desperate civilians trapped in flooded areas of the Russian-occupied eastern bank — that is, if the rescue missions could brave the drones and Russian snipers.
The boats have carried volunteers and plain-clothes servicemen, shuttling across from Ukrainian-held areas on the western bank to evacuate people stuck on rooftops, in attics and elsewhere.
Witnesses and Ukrainian officials reported a rescue vessel on June 11 being shot by Russia soldiers positioned in houses, killing three civilians and injuring 10 others.
Drone footage obtained by the AP showed gunshots being fired from a nearby summer home as the evacuation boat passed an estuary.
The video's authenticity was confirmed by government spokesperson Oleksandr Tolokonnikov.
Serhii, 59, an evacuee on the boat, said he saw Russian soldiers on the balcony of the house.
They shouted something — "Move on," or "Don't move" — then fired, he said.
Serhii, who would only give his first name because his family still lived in occupied territory, threw his body over his wife's to protect her.
Some days later, in Kherson, the boom of artillery resounded in the background as 46-year-old Vitalii Holodniak, one of those killed in the boat attack, was laid to rest.
His sister Svitlana Nosik, 56, held up his death certificate. "Place of death: Dneiper River, evacuation boat," it read.
"That is not how I expected to greet my brother in Kherson," she said.
At least 150 people have been rescued by Ukraine from Russian-controlled areas in the risky evacuation operations, Mr Tolokonnikov said.
It is a small fraction compared to the nearly 2,750 people rescued from flooded regions controlled by Ukraine.
"We will surely do everything we can, but we also cannot expose our people to danger," Mr Tolokonnikov said.
"Russians keep threatening us and fulfilling their threats by shooting people in the back."
A local organisation Helping to Leave, helping Ukrainians living under Russian occupation to escape, said it received requests from 3,000 people in the occupied zone, said Dina Urich, head of the organisation's evacuation department.
Rescuers have often used information provided by relatives of those stranded. Military drone pilots have searched for people and plotted routes through the fast-moving waters laden with debris, while navigating around Russian troop positions.
They also have delivered water, food and cigarettes to people with a note "from Santa."
Valerii Lobitskyi, a volunteer rescuer, said shelling often derailed the missions.
He has been shot at once, and on another occasion had to abort a mission to rescue an older woman after a close call with a Russian motorboat.
Another evacuee, Kateryna Krupych, said she looked out the window on June 7 to find mucky water surrounding her home on the island of Chaika, in the gray zone between front lines. Houses floated by.
She packed up her family's supplies and they left in a boat, but got separated along the way. Eventually, they were all rescued by Ukrainians.
AP/Reuters
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