General Mark Hertling, the former commander of US forces in Europe, offered a heated response on Tuesday after the Novaya Kakhovka dam was blown up, saying it would have serious consequences for the Ukrainian offensive.

“Part of the Nova Kakhovka dam has been destroyed/failed. The flood from the Dnipro to the Black Sea will also affect Bug and Ingulets. The flood will also affect the strip of Russian defense lines, as well as the potential for the Ukrainian Armed Forces to ford the river, the supply lines and the future offensive on Kherson,” the American general wrote on his page. Twitterallegedly hinting that he believes Ukraine will launch its long-awaited offensive in this southern region of the country.

The day before, there were numerous speculations and speculations on social networks that Kyiv troops had finally launched an offensive to liberate the territories occupied by Russia last year after the military command in Moscow hastily announced that on the night from Sunday to Monday its troops repelled “a large-scale offensive » of the Ukrainian army in Donbas in the morning.

After several hours of complete silence from Kyiv, the Ukrainian military said Monday afternoon that it had no information about a major offensive that Russia said Kyiv had launched at five points along the front line in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

“We do not have such information and we do not comment on any fakes,” said the spokesman of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, answering questions from Reuters.

The American general speaks of a “significant flood” after the destruction of the dam in Nova Kakhovka

Mark Hertling reminds that the destruction of the Novaya Kakhovka dam will also limit or even completely stop the supply of drinking water to the Crimean Canal, potentially affecting millions of people.

“Cities on both sides of the river [Nipru] will experience significant flooding over the next 24 hours,” the US official added, noting, however, that cities on the east/left bank would feel the impact of the dam’s failure more severely.

Gertling also says that the US military has modeled different levels of downstream damage to calculate the effects that are significant in each scenario.

“This will seriously affect the Ukrainian offensive,” he concludes.

In addition to the Crimean peninsula, illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, the Nova Kakhovka dam also supplies water to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, also controlled by Russia. Europe’s largest nuclear power plant is located 150 kilometers from the dam and uses water from the reservoir to cool the reactors.

Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of undermining a Russian-controlled dam

The Ukrainian military accused Russian forces early Tuesday of blowing up the dam, and the Southern Military Command said on its Facebook page that “Kakhovka (dam) was blown up by Russian occupation forces.”

“The degree of destruction, the speed and volume of water, the likely areas of flooding are being clarified.”

Instead, Russian news agencies reported that the dam, controlled by Russian forces, had been destroyed by bombing, and an official working in Russia said it was an act of terrorism, a term Russian propaganda uses for an attack by Ukraine.

One of the Russian state news agencies, RIA Novosti, reported that the water level around the dam has risen by five meters, and several islands downstream are already completely flooded.

Since last year, both sides have repeatedly accused each other of plans to breach the dam with explosives, which would flood much of the area downstream and likely cause significant destruction around Kherson. In November 2022, Zelensky stated that the dam holds about 18 million cubic meters of water, and in the event of its explosion, 80 settlements, including Kherson, would quickly be flooded.

The big concern, however, is how this could affect the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, as the Ukrainian Atomic Energy Agency currently says the situation is under control.

The representative of the Russian occupation administration in the area said, for his part, that there is no “critical danger” for the nuclear plant yet, his comments were picked up by the Moscow state media.

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