The Kakhovka Dam’s destruction shows a Russian military on its back foot 

In the early hours of June 6, the Kakhovka Dam burst. The most probable culprit is Russia, given its control over the dam throughout the occupation of right-bank Kherson Oblast.  

The incident will have significant, tragic humanitarian effects.  But as a matter of warfare, it illustrates how badly off-balance Russian forces are in the face of Ukraine’s counteroffensive already underway.

The Kakhovka Dam is the last of six large cascades along the Dnieper, all built during the Soviet era to regulate flooding, provide hydroelectric power, and enable merchant ships to navigate upriver.  Each dam creates a large reservoir containing a massive amount of water. The Kakhovka Reservoir holds around 18.2 cubic kilometers. Russian forces held the reservoir from late February to November 2022, when the Ukrainian advance forced them withdraw across the Dnieper. Ukraine accused Russia of mining the dam during this period. 

The dam could have burst from Russia mismanagement. Throughout 2022, poor Russian lock control meant the Kakhovka Reservoir reached a record low. Russia closed the reservoir’s locks in late 2022, meaning that, as of May, the reservoir had reached a record high. The pressure may simply have burst the dam. Nevertheless, this degree of damage points to Russian culpability, even if the full effects of the explosion and subsequent flooding are beyond Russia’s explicit initial intent. 

Moreover, destruction of critical infrastructure is an explicit aspect of Russian escalation management theory and warfighting doctrine. Russia’s persistent bombardment of Ukraine’s power grid is meant to break the Ukrainian electrical system in half, for example, making sabotage of the hydroelectric plant well within standard Russian practice. 

However, it is not simply that Russia destroyed the dam. Russia had reasonable motivation to destroy the dam back in fall 2022, during its retreat across the Dnieper, in order to disrupt Ukraine’s offensive. The relevant question is why Russia would destroy the dam now. For the dam’s destruction and subsequent flooding come days after the Russian defense ministry announced that Ukraine’s counteroffensive had begun. 

Russia’s commander, Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov, had allegedly directed the defense of a large sector against multiple Ukrainian brigades. The claim itself is farcical — it would be as if General Dwight Eisenhower had concerned himself with the movements of a few companies during the Battle of the Bulge. And the numbers claimed in the Russian report are, as usual, absurd. 

Yet it is correct in one respect — Ukraine’s counteroffensive has indeed begun. Ukrainian units at company-to-battalion strength are probing Russian positions from Vasylivka in Zaporizhzhia Oblast near the Dnieper River to Bakhmut, the location of the war’s most intense urban combat to date. Ukraine executed a long-term shaping phase, during which it hit Russian logistics sites and oil storage facilities with long-range kamikaze drones and rocket artillery.   

Over the past month, Ukraine’s military has increased pressure along the front line, striking critical command and control and logistics sites throughout Russian-occupied Ukraine.  It has also staged two daring drone attacks on the Kremlin, withstood a withering Russian missile bombardment against Kyiv, and more recently supported allied forces in two limited incursions into Russian territory.

Russia’s commanders, Gerasimov foremost among them, are increasingly confused as to Ukraine’s operational intentions. Broadly speaking, Ukraine obviously seeks to cut the land bridge between the Donbas and Crimea, thus jeopardizing Russian positions in southern Ukraine.  But beyond that, it is entirely unclear where and when Ukraine will strike along the line.   

By probing multiple points and staging limited incursions into Russia, Ukraine appears to be successfully muddling the Russian General Staff’s understanding of the battlespace.   

Once the main blows start to fall, if Ukraine’s shaping and probing phases succeed, Russian forces will respond in a disjointed, ineffectual manner, facilitating an operational breakthrough and exploitation to shatter Russian defenses in at least one sector.  This will not end the war immediately, but it will force Russia to choose between holding different areas — particularly between the Crimean land bridge and elsewhere, imposing a series of nearly-insoluble operational dilemmas upon the Russian General Staff, and disrupting the Kremlin. 

Given this context, the Kakhovka Dam explosion might have some military relevance.  If Ukraine had been planning to cross the Dnieper and attack Russian positions in the left-bank portion of Kherson Oblast — the swath of land closest to Crimea — this flooding will disrupt that operation for at least a few weeks.  It also gives Russia time to redeploy forces east, reset along shorter lines, and in general unwind its position in Kherson Oblast. 

However, Ukraine was almost certainly not planning to attack across the Dnieper. The river is wide with few good crossing points, and Russia had robust defenses on the left bank, the side closest to Crimea.  Ukraine would have continued to probe with special operations forces, and may have conducted limited landings, as the Ukrainian Armed Forces attempted in October 2022.  But even an operation of this sort, around 600 strong, would have had only a limited impact in Kherson Oblast during a large-scale offensive across the country.  

Moreover, the bursting of the dam is likely to flood Russia’s prepared defenses, making long-term resistance more difficult if it intends to hold left-bank Kherson Oblast. 

It is possible that Russia fell for a Ukrainian deception operation and is now looking to cover its extreme left as fully as possible.  This would indicate a distinct degree of confusion within the Russian General Staff. This would confirm, along with the evidence presented above, that Russia is terrified of Ukraine’s impending offensive and gives it a good chance of success. 

This view of Russian planning carries two longer-term implications for Russian strategy.  First, it signals that Russia is not planning on holding Kherson Oblast, which will at best be used as a buffer to provide depth to Crimea.  Second, it shows that Russia understands that a prosperous Ukraine is inconsistent with its national interests. If Ukraine succeeds, then NATO will integrate Kyiv into its command structure and Europe will integrate Kyiv into its economic and social system. 

If Ukraine cannot be seized, then, it must be broken. Hence the dam’s destruction and its disruption to Kherson’s port to Ukraine’s inland trade network. 

At some point, the Kremlin is likely to consider nuclear weapons in the face of a successful Ukrainian offensive.  This does not mean Russia will necessarily use nuclear weapons (which would have repercussions in nearby parts of Russia, after all) but that there will be a greater willingness to move up the escalation ladder with an attack on major infrastructure that causes casualties in the tens of thousands. 

Another increase in American naval presence in Europe is justified, particularly around Russian nuclear bastions, just to demonstrate the cost of using nuclear weapons. But the U.S. cannot deter Russia solely through deployments. More effective would be a public fast-track to Ukrainian NATO membership. At this point, the only way to secure Europe’s peace in the long-term is through Ukraine’s NATO accession. Unless Ukraine is admitted to NATO, there will be another war.  

Moreover, with Ukraine en route to NATO, the utter hopelessness of Russia’s predicament becomes transparent. The Kremlin must now confront the reality that it cannot hope to outlast its adversaries. 

Seth Cropsey is the founder and president of Yorktown Institute. He served as a naval officer and as deputy Undersecretary of the Navy and is the author of Mayday and Seablindness.