Weapon of Mass Destruction

The Nova Kakhovka dam explosion and ‘ecocide’ in Ukraine.

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A boy walks along a flooded street in the town of Kherson, following flooding caused by damage sustained at the Nova Kakhovka dam on Tuesday. (Photo by STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images)

Every sensational attack in the Ukraine war is a whodunnit.

Russians are capable of anything, of course. They’re always suspects.

But rarely can one firmly rule out Ukrainian responsibility. For them the stakes of the war are existential, so they’re necessarily ruthless in pursuing victory. And they’ve proved more capable of spectacular operations, including deep behind enemy lines, than anyone believed possible before February 2022.

That drone fly-by of the Kremlin last month? That was them, as your humble correspondent surmised. Assassinations of Russian propagandists? Them. Last year’s explosion on the Kerch Strait Bridge? Them. The sinking of the Moskva? Them.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    The “airing of the theories” is a good use for this newsletter.

    Also, wait the Ukrainians blew up the NordStream pipeline? Holy crap. That’s the first I’ve heard of it.

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    Markdavis918

    Nick, I enjoy your articles, but the dispatch today had a article about a Ukrainian special forces team that blew up that border team pipeline. I believe that was first reported by the Washington post. In your article you opined that it was the Russians who did it.

    What is the truth? Who knows I guess, right.

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  3. Halvor

    The Crimean canal was the prize next in importance to the holy mother city of Kyiv itself. These were the first objectives of conquest. Ever since Putin's failure to take Kiev, the fate of the canal has been the real question behind the Bakhmut sub-phase of the war. When you're losing the match, overturn the checkers board. There's no clearing Putin of this deed "no matter who pushed the plunger." I agree with Nick that the method of destroying everything as far as the eye can see has East Slavic features going back as far as when the Mongols were investing Kyiv.

    The cutting off of water service only returns Crimea to the status pro ante. The people in Crimea have enough water in the reservoirs to drink, but there won't be as much as wanted for agriculture, industry and the naval base.

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  4. Kbg

    Interesting thing about this war...win or lose, Russia has shown itself to be incompetent in just about everything they do. Another interesting thing, the internet has made us all so cynical that the old Soviet/Russian disinformation campaigns are just another drop in a huge informational ocean of accurate and false datapoints.

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      WKDawson

      It is not rational, but it might not be entirely incompetence, though this may be a miscalculation. I think in many ways, this resembles the playbook of a narcissist who has a fixation on someone or something. If the narcissist cannot have it, then often the recourse is to destroy it. That is why it is so tough for a woman who has the misfortune of dealing with a stalker. Often, the woman gets murdered.

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  5. Dmoelling

    It was just the 80th anniversary of the RAF's dambusters raid on German dams in WWII. (The movie's good by the way). They had to develop huge skip bombs dropped by heavy bombers (plural) to breach the dams in just the right places. So pretty unlikely that artillery shells could do this and certainly no missiles of the type Ukraine has either. It's a russian job

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  6. Trichwages

    Sobering and informative. May God bless Ukraine and its people, which includes Crimean peninsula.

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  7. Pohl

    Good article. Always love your Ukraine coverage.

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  8. Avatar photo
    J. Eric

    Very illuminating piece. So many possibilities and scenarios I could never have imagined. Grateful to be an American. Thanks

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  9. Avatar photo
    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    I adopted from Cebastopol. The orphanage there was clean, and well-run, but penniless. The orphans are the poor of the poor, and live desperate lives. The lack of water scares me because ensuring little kids get enough water will not be anyone's priority.

    That's what makes me angry about this dam break.

    If I were POTUS, I'd send in a humanitarian support to ensure the Crimeans have sufficient water. and I'd send troops to ensure Russians don't try to harm the humanitarians. It'd be ballsy, and potentially upset Putin. So what? He knows he cannot beat us, he'll growl and grumble, but he's not that stupid....

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    1. Avatar photo
      WKDawson

      I think an essential reason for not sending troops is because Putin can disingenuously use it to say "See? Look, it is a war with NATO". Putin has to face that these are the Ukrainians who are sticking up for themselves. He can claim "proxy war", but it is the Ukrainians who are resisting him. If we intervene with troops, we play into Putin's wicked and dishonest hand. He has to lose the territory to the Ukrainians.

      [I think this is what we did most wrong with Vietnam and to some extent Afghanistan. We sent our troops to places where the corrupt leaders were more interested in pocketing all the money and sucking the nation dry, and they figured that the gravy train would just keep on coming so the sucking sound would be constantly going. The leadership in Ukraine is at least showing some signs of __genuinely__ wanting to join the West and adopting the standards of Western institutions. Not that "Hey, yeah! we want defraud-cracy. The last ones were delicious."]

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    2. Pohl

      You mention US troops in Ukraine a lot. Ain’t gonna happen. Especially on a humanitarian mission to Crimea during a war. Good grief.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

        I only mention US military intervention because it would save civilian lives. Sending equipment only comes at the price of needless civilian deaths. And people can make that choice.

        But it is a choice that illustrates our values.

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        1. Pohl

          I definitely don’t object to feasible humanitarian interventions in the world at large. I do strongly disagree that sending US troops to WAR against Russia is something worth considering at this point. And it is reductive to say it’s either troops or equipment, and the latter is causing civilian deaths. I’m missing the logic and not enjoying the impugning of our values, which have kept Ukraine from total defeat thus far.

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          1. Avatar photo
            Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

            It's not reductive. We made a choice not to support an ally with troops. As a result, their civilians are being shelled, shot, and killed in large numbers. That's a choice our administration made, to allow for thousands of civilian deaths. They know our intervention will end the conflict, but instead we pat ourselves on the back about how clever we are to kill by proxy, while ignoring the dead and dying civilians. I strongly disagree on David French on this one.

            People may agree/disagree it was the right choice, but the innocents who died pay a price for our choice. And the orphans will be among those who suffer.

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  10. Ken Motamed

    The salient point, as Nick said, is that this tragedy would not have happened if Russia had not engaged in a naked act of aggression in the first place.

    I also agree that Putin is gradually coming to the realization that he can't win this war, and wants to inflict as much damage as he can before leaving Ukraine, costing NATO countries billions in rebuilding expenses.

    The good news is that the Biden administration is becoming more amenable to Ukraine's attacks inside Russia.

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