A dam in Ukraine was designed to withstand almost any attack imaginable — from the outside. The evidence suggests Russia blew it up from within.
By James Glanz, Marc Santora, Pablo Robles, Haley Willis, Lauren Leatherby, Christoph Koettl and Dmitriy Khavin
Moments after a major dam in a Ukrainian war zone gave way, wild torrents cascaded over the jagged remains of the top. But the real problem most likely lay elsewhere, cloaked deep beneath the surface of the raging waters.
Deep inside the dam was an Achilles’ heel. And because the dam was built during Soviet times, Moscow had every page of the engineering drawings and knew where it was.
At 2:35 a.m and 2:54 a.m. on June 6, seismic sensors in Ukraine and Romania detected the telltale signs of large explosions. Witnesses in the area heard large blasts between roughly 2:15 a.m. and 3 a.m. And just before the dam gave way, American intelligence satellites captured infrared heat signals that also indicated an explosion.
As the water levels further dropped this week, they fell below the top of the concrete foundation. The section that collapsed was not visible above the water line — strong evidence that the foundation had suffered structural damage, engineers said.
In the chaotic aftermath, with each side blaming the other for the collapse, multiple explanations are theoretically possible. But the evidence clearly suggests the dam was crippled by an explosion set off by the side that controls it: Russia.
Even in a war that has razed entire cities, the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam in southern Ukraine stands out.
Thousands of people were displaced by flooding from one of the world’s largest reservoirs, which was vital for irrigating farmland considered the breadbasket of Europe. The disaster puts global food supplies for millions at risk and could threaten fragile ecosystems for decades.
The dam was visibly scarred by fighting in the months before the breach. Ukrainian strikes had damaged one part of the roadway over the dam, and retreating Russian troops later blew up another. Last month, satellite images showed water flowing uncontrolled over some of the gates.
This has led to suggestions that the dam may have merely fallen victim to the accumulated damage, which Russia has seized on to deny responsibility. But multiple lines of evidence reviewed by The New York Times, from original engineering plans to interviews with engineers who study dam failures, support a different explanation: that the collapse of the dam was no accident. The catastrophic failure of its underlying concrete foundation was very unlikely to occur on its own.
Given the satellite and seismic detections of explosions in the area, by far the most likely cause of the collapse was an explosive charge placed in the maintenance passageway, or gallery, that runs through the concrete heart of the structure, according to two American engineers, an expert in explosives and a Ukrainian engineer with extensive experience with the dam’s operations.
“If your objective is to destroy the dam itself, a large explosion would be required,” said Michael W. West, a geotechnical engineer and expert in dam safety and failure analysis, who is a retired principal at the engineering firm Wiss, Janney, Elstner. “The gallery is an ideal place to put that explosive charge.”
The article ends with these words:
A video that emerged this week, after water levels had dropped, provides clear evidence of the catastrophic failure. It shows that the top of the concrete foundation, not just the gates, was destroyed.
Source: Milinfolive via Telegram
Mr. Strelets, the engineer, called the gallery the Achilles’ heel of the Kakhovka dam. He said he hoped a charge had not been put there, because the damage would be irreparable.
“I walked along this dam many times,” he said. “I was proud of it. It is the property of my country. I never even imagined that someone would attempt to destroy it.”
Robin Stein, Aleksandra Koroleva, Julian E. Barnes, Christiaan Triebert, Agnes Chang, Anna Lukinova and Brent McDonald contributed reporting.
For the full article with several important images, please click here:
Floodwaters reached the rooftops of houses in Kherson, about 40 miles downstream from the dam. Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times.
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