Even though Russia has already damaged at least three dams in Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, and Donetsk Oblasts over the course of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam marked a dramatic escalation.
Statements made by local occupational authorities in Kherson Oblast and by Russian propagandists soon after the incident contradicted each other.
Early on the morning of June 6, the collaborationist "mayor" of Nova Kakhovka Volodymyr Leontiev told top Russian news agency RIA Novosti that there were no explosions on the dam and dismissed reports of them as nonsense.
"Everything is peaceful and quiet in the town," he said. But soon it became clear that this was not the case, and Leontiev quickly reversed course, reporting numerous strikes on the dam (not indicating who had attacked it).
As the hours passed and there was no clear understanding of how to react, some propagandists started promoting the idea that the dam had given way not because of recent explosions but as a result of strikes on it in previous months.
The area near the hydroelectric plant had been affected before, such as when Russian forces blew up an automobile bridge as they were retreating from the right bank of the Dnipro River.
But these strikes could not possibly have caused the dam to collapse, says Mykola Kalinin, the chief engineer of Ukrhydroproject, a Ukrainian institution which has designed hydro plants since the first half of the 20th century.
He explains that the Kakhovka HPP was designed and built to withstand a nuclear strike from the outside, but not from the inside.
He adds that in this case, the explosions would not be widely audible, because the mines that triggered them would be laid deep within the dam below the water level.
Initially, Russian pro-war Telegram channels were celebrating the harm which the dam's destruction would inflict upon Ukrainian troops supposedly deployed downstream on the islands near Kherson. They wrote that the Ukrainian military swiftly started evacuating their units on boats while under Russian fire.
When the consequences of the dam's destruction became more evident, Russian propaganda changed its rhetoric.
Russia TASS news agency, citing an anonymous source in the local emergency services, reported that the dam might have been destroyed by a Ukrainian Vilkha heavy multiple rocket launcher (which, given the dam's strength and the fact that Russian occupation authorities denied there being any explosions, is not possible).
The reaction of local collaborationist authorities was also demonstrative. First, they tried to downplay the significance of the incident. The head of the occupational government in Kherson Oblast Andrey Alekseyenko stated that there was no threat to people's lives from the collapse of the dam and that emergency services "were controlling the level of water in the river".
Head of the collaborationist administration of Kherson Oblast Volodymyr Saldo assured audiences on camera that Nova Kakhovka and other towns were living normally and people were walking about streets. He said all this literally standing in front of the flooded central square of Nova Kakhovka.
In another video address, Saldo said that there was no need for mass evacuations from Kherson Oblast and that the flooding wouldn't impact the rest of the region.
Volodymyr Saldo in Nova Kakhovka
As they assiduously denied any Russian culpability for the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, Russian propagandists also contemplated the possibility of destroying the Kyiv Hydroelectric Power Plant right north of Ukraine's capital.
Evgheny Buzhynsky, a professor at Moscow's Higher School of Economics, one of Russia's top universities, suggested blowing up the Kyiv HPP as an act of revenge "for Shebekino."
The head of the collaborationist parliament in Crimea Vladimir Konstantinov stated that Ukrainian authorities might blow up the Kyiv HPP "when they realize that they are losing power".
Russia's early media reaction to the destruction of the Kakhovka dam showed total confusion about how to cover and spin the event. Only when the scale of the catastrophe became apparent did they begin blaming Ukraine for it.
