•  FaceDeer   ( @FaceDeer@lemmy.ml ) 
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          331 year ago

          And I could easily flip the question around to OP. Why would Ukraine blow up their own dam, flooding their own territory and potentially crippling their own nuclear power plant? And making a counteroffensive across the Dnipro river that much harder?

          It’s not to deprive Crimea of water ahead of the counteroffensive, Crimea’s reservoirs are full right now so they’ve got a year’s worth in the tank. That’s about the only possible benefit I can think of that Ukraine might have got out of this, and even if it were so it would be a trivial benefit compared to the costs. Crimea’s water supply isn’t going to make a difference to the actual fight that’s about to happen there.

          • And I could easily flip the question around to OP. Why would Ukraine blow up their own dam,

            To justify more retaliation against Russia. Our dick of minister Charles Michel called it a war crime.

            Crimea has 1 year worth ?

            And what happens on year 2?

            •  pingveno   ( @pingveno@lemmy.ml ) 
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              341 year ago

              To justify more retaliation against Russia.

              Ukraine doesn’t need more justification. Russia is occupying their territory. It doesn’t make sense for Ukraine to cause yet more internal displacement and risk a nuclear meltdown for something it already has.

              • What’s the point of flooding a region by destroying your “assets” when you could mass bombing like a deaf these villages.
                After all, the west sells the war like an hegemonic move with mass slaughtering traits. Why Russia is not so heavy on using aviation, then?
                US were using tomahawks on Syria for less than that.

                If destruction and high toll number (aka ethnic cleansing) was the goal, they won’t deliver like a grocery shop.

                  • At least in the US, most people are not tracking this in anything but generalities. If they even know this dam was breached, they won’t know the significance. It’s also doesn’t have quite the visual impact of row after row of bombed out apartments or bound bodies from a massacre.

      • One thing would be that Russia has already set a precedent with a long campaign to attack and destroy civilian infrastructure (power and heat specifically) just before winter to cause bigger humanitarian crisis.

        • Aliexpress and Amazon still delivers in Ukraine. For a country in war and subject to unpredictable attacks, it’s quite a level of commitment.

          Ho and Ukrainian TV is still emitting, you still follow your tv show.

        •  TheBelgian   ( @TheBelgian@lemmy.ml ) 
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          1 year ago

          The fact there are collateral damage, yes, the fact that is intentional annihilation, nope.

          You want to see what is it for a country loosing its infrastructure during a war? google: “how much infrastructure was destroyed in Iraqi, Syria, Afghanistan ?” And “how”.
          It is not with 2 mortars blowing up a kitchen and fighting on the field.

          Ukrainians still have broadband internet, can shop on Amazon and our officials can travel freely in Kiev.
          Even Sean Penn could deliver in hand his golden toy to a country leader who should be in a bunker instead of making photo-shoot if he or Kiev was really threatened!

          Freaking joke!

          •  AngryAvocado   ( @AngryAvocado@lemmy.ml ) 
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            1 year ago

            Funny how fickle someone’s memory can be. I’m not talking about collateral damage from strikes on military targets, I’m talking about campaign directed against Ukraine’s power grid during last autumn and winter.

            I even remember people here and on lemmygrad cheering on reports of how much of energy infrastructure was destroyed and admiring pictures of dark cities during blackouts. But I guess that didn’t happen? Or maybe the entire thing was fine because it failed?

            • Again, if he was in mass slaughter mode like said on the TV and apparently reddit refugees, your grid would have been wiped out. It’s not an isolated kitchen in city but a whole block that Russia would have destroyed.

          • that is intentional annihilation, nope.

            What about the children being trafficked from Ukraine to Russia? The murders and systematic raping in Bucha and elsewhere. It’s plainly genocide.

      • To divert resources from/mess up Ukraine’s planned offensive.
        Also they haven’t exactly been below causing great suffering for civilians simply because they can throughout this war.

      •  Senokir   ( @Senokir@lemmy.ml ) 
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        1 year ago

        My speculation as to why they would do such a horrible thing is because they know they can’t hold the position and want to cause as much damage as possible before they leave. Why would they bomb civilian targets like apartment buildings?

      • From the article

        But if Russia did destroy the dam, he says, it might have hoped to protect its western flank by complicating Ukraine’s offensive moves. “We know the Russians have form for this sort of thing,” he argues, pointing to Stalin’s destruction of the Dnieper dam at Zaporizhia in 1941.

      •  seirim   ( @seirim@lemmy.ml ) 
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        71 year ago

        Crimea depends on water via canal from Ukraine-controlled territory, which Ukraine shut off as was their right. This must be the big f u back in retaliation.