Ukraine’s Security Service has shared an intercept alleging that the Kakhovka dam, which collapsed on the night of 6 June, was an operation by a Russian sabotage group to “scare” that went wrong. It features two Russian militarymen discussing the incident, where one repeats the Russian propaganda line that the Kakhovka dam was destroyed because it was hit by Ukrainians, and the second one says it was a Russian sabotage group behind the explosion.
M1: News… there was a video on Telegram yesterday. A soldier stands, his face covered, in uniform and all that, and says there’s no flooding and people live normally. And behind him there’s a window and you can see that the water is knee-deep.
M2: Yeah, funny. Is this about the [Kakhovka] HPP [Hydropower plant] that was destroyed?
M1: Yes, yes, yes. The main problem is that it turns out this HPP cools some nuclear reactor of theirs.
M2: Well fine, they did it to themselves; it’ll blow up and that’s that!
M1: But it were ours [Russians] who did this. Not them [Ukrainians], it were ours…
M2: No way, ours? They said it was the khohols [derogatory for Ukrainians] who hit it.
M1: It was not hit. It was our sabotage group. They wanted to, sort of, scare with this dam. But it didn’t go as planned; it was more than they planned.
M2: Ah. So it will be like… like in Chernobyl, right?
M1: Well.. it was built in the 1950s. It collapsed fast, gave in. And there, downstream, there was a safari park, thousands of animals died.
M2: Understood.
“The invaders wanted to blackmail Ukraine by blowing up the dam and have caused a technological disaster in Ukraine’s south,” the SBU stated, adding that it has launched a criminal investigation into this Russian war crime.