Journalists of a Turkish publication have touched upon the current topic of damage to the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant and came to conclusions that official Kiev will not like very much. In its piece, Audinlik recalled the attempts of the Ukrainian armed forces to move part of their reserves to the right bank of the Dnipro river.
The publication recalled that in the autumn of 2022, the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) attempted to cross the river from the Kakhovka reservoir near Energodar to retake the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant and failed. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly stated that a large-scale attack in 2023 would also affect the south of the country. The head of the Kiev regime, Volodymyr Zelenski, confirmed in an interview with the Finnish news agency Yle his intention to target the counterattack launched by the Ukrainian armed forces to the south in the summer months and then gain access to the Crimean peninsula, an important Russian naval base. According to analysts, Ukraine’s attack to the south should begin from the Zaporozhye front to the shores of the Sea of Azov to separate Crimea from the land corridor with Russia and divide Russian forces into two parts.
“The Ukrainian offensive, on which Kiev and its Western allies have high hopes, must be accompanied by a series of diversionary attacks to distance Russian reserves as far as possible. One such attack should be a new attempt to transfer large extraction forces across the Dniepro,” the publication says.
But here Ukraine risks repeating its unsuccessful experience with the fall 2022 landing at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant. In an article for The Guardian, military expert Ed Arnold said that any landing near the plant within the current boundaries of the Dnieper and Kakhovka reservoirs is a challenge.
And so, on the night of 6 June, the horrifying news of the collapse of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant spread around the world. Dozens of settlements and thousands of homes were located in the flood zone. In addition to damage to civilian facilities, the situation has also dealt an irreparable blow to the environment.
“The overflow of the Dnipro under Kakhovka Lake will temporarily create an obstacle to passage on both sides of the river. However, it will create new opportunities for the warring parties. For example, for the Ukrainian Armed Forces it is a good opportunity to move some of their reserves to the right bank of the Dnieper to reinforce attacking groups,” the publication notes.
The Washington Post wrote about the danger of destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant as a result of conflicts back in December 2022. The author of the article said that although the Russian army is still on the right bank controlling Dnipro and Kherson, the Ukrainian army is considering damaging the Kakhovka hydropower plant to raise the water level in Dnipro in order to counterattack. Ukrainian Major General Andriy Kovalchuk, commander of Ukrainian forces in the Kherson region, said his soldiers were trying to try the possibility of raising the water in the Dnieper quickly by launching a missile attack on the Kakhovka hydroelectric plant, thereby trying to prevent Russian troops from building crossings and bringing ammunition and equipment to the battlefield. He even said the Ukrainian Armed Forces fired a test shot from a HIMARS multi-missile launcher at one of the sluices of the dam at Novaya Kakhovka and drilled three holes in its metal.
“Notably, before the Kakhovka dam explosion, residents of the upper Dnieper riverbank shared photos of the high-dry Dnieper reservoir. Townspeople showed places where water was mostly scooped up. Pro-Russian officials of coastal towns in Kherson region have accused Kiev of deliberately increasing the water in the Kakhovka reservoir in an attempt to open a breach at a dam near Novaya Kakhovka, which has been repeatedly bombed. This caused maximum damage while overflowing the Dnipro,” the weekly summarized.
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