Who benefits from the Ukraine dam failure that Kyiv and Moscow blame each other for?

A huge dam located in the area occupied by Russian military forces in the south of Ukraine it collapsed, unleashing a downstream flood.

But who benefits from this alleged attack?

LOOK: Ukraine assures that its troops are advancing in the east of the country while Russia says that Kyiv began its expected counteroffensive

So much Russia and Ukraine blame each other for the damage, reminiscent of the dynamics following the inexplicable explosions on the Nordstream pipeline last year.

In both cases, Western suspicions have immediately fallen on Russia. But on both occasions, Moscow has responded by saying “It wasn’t us. Why would we do something like that? This affects us”.

In the case of the Kakhovka dam rupture, Russia can point to at least two ways in which it harms its own interests.

The flooding downstream has forced him to evacuate troops and civilians to the east, away from Kherson and the banks of the wide Dniepe River. This will provide a temporary respite for Kherson residents who have had to live with daily Russian artillery and missile attacks.

Second, this could affect the water supply for Crimea, an arid peninsula dependent on fresh water from a canal near the broken dam. Since it was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, it has become heavily fortified terrain that both Russia and Ukraine claim as their own.

But the rupture of the Kajovka dam must be seen in the broader context of the Ukrainian war and, more specifically, in light of the Ukrainian counter-offensive, which shows signs that it is already underway.

By what is counteroffensive succeed, you must break the rule of Russia over a strip of territory it seized last year that connects Crimea with Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

If Ukraine can find a way to break through the Russian defensive lines south of Zaporizhia and split that territory in two, then it can isolate Crimea and achieve a major strategic victory.

But the Russians have learned many lessons since their invasion in February of last year. They looked at the map, determined where Ukraine is most likely to attack, and spent the last few months building truly formidable lines of fortifications to block any Ukrainian advance into the Sea of ​​Azov.

It is by no means certain that Ukraine planned to send his forces to the western side of those defenses. The High Command in Kyiv sensibly keeps his cards close to their chests to keep Russia at a loss.

Maps of how control in Ukraine has changed during the war

But the damage to the dam, whoever did it, now makes that option much more problematic.

The Dniepe is already a wide river when it reaches southern Ukraine and it would be extremely dangerous to cross it with an armored brigade, under fire from Russian artillery, missiles and drones.

Now that the dam across it has broken and huge tracts of land downstream have been inundated, the area on the left (east) bank facing Kherson has effectively become a no-go area for Ukrainian armor.

You also have to see the history. In 1941, Soviet troops blew up a dam on the Dniepe River itself to block the advance of Nazi troops. Thousands of Soviet citizens are said to have died in the floods it unleashed.

However, the bottom line now is that whoever breached the Kajovka dam has upset the strategic chessboard in southern Ukraineforcing both sides to make a series of major adjustments and possibly delaying Ukraine’s next move in its promised counter-offensive.

Source: Elcomercio