American Propaganda Part Two - The Nova Kakhovka Dam explosion

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Matt Taibbi today questions the American narrative on the explosion of the Nova Kakhovka dam. So do Glenn Greenwald, Tucker Carlson, and many others.

Why would they do it? One obvious way for the Ukrainians across the Dnipro would be over the top of the dam. Blowing the dam puts that out of the question.

The Russians have consistently destroyed Ukrainian infrastructure just out of vindictiveness. They have wantonly blown up apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, theaters and other such buildings as a matter of course. It is not their country, and they don't care.

The flooding has destroyed several villages, more controlled by the Russians than by the Ukrainians. It has flooded our the 40,000 inhabitant town of Hola Prystan.  The Russians have no particular fondness for this town – like the rest of the region of Kherson they have been extremely reluctant to accept Russian passports, teach school, or support the invaders in any way. This I know from people who still live there. The Russians would simply not care about the inhabitants. It does not seem to have had much strategic importance.

The dam was important as a source of water for Crimea. Whoever winds up governing Crimea will need water. It is hard to see that depriving them of water will achieve much of a strategic objective for either side. The dam also watered Ukrainian agriculture in the territory seized by Russia in early 2022. The situation is too unstable and much of the region for the farmers to work effectively. Russia may have cynically decided that they would not benefit from that agriculture in any case.

The biggest question is how it was done. The Russians had controlled the dam since early 2022. They claim that Ukraine performed this attack with missiles. Most of Ukraine’s missiles, like Russia’s, have half ton warheads – enough to break through perhaps 10 feet of concrete. Look at the size of this dam on Google Earth! Top to bottom in this picture there are a railroad, a bunch of stuff in the middle, and the M14 Highway. The highway alone must be 30 feet wide, making the whole dam may be 120 to 150 feet wide. I cannot conceive of how missiles could break something that large. They say the dam was 30 m – close to 100 feet high.

We in Kyiv have quite a bit of experience with missiles. They are loud. People hear and see them. It would have taken more than one.  I can testify that even if you are not paying attention when the first one arrives, by the second one you certainly are.  I have not read reports that anybody heard or saw even a first missile in this case.

The reports I read are of one large explosion that could be heard for 80 km.  Once again, I note that I do not hear the missiles that explode more than 10 miles from my house. I read about them in the newspaper in the morning.

The Ukrainians contend that the Russians had mined the dam with explosives as far back as last year, anticipating that they may have needed to blow it to prevent the Ukrainians from using it as a bridge. It certainly makes sense to me. It is a project on the order of bringing down a 30-story skyscraper. Done by demolition experts, not missiles.

Tucker Carlson, saying that it only makes sense that is the Ukrainians who did it, does not make sense to me. As a journalist he had better do a whole lot more investigation than simply guessing.

Graham