Russia's 'Smoking Gun' on Ukraine Dam Collapse

A Russian law passed days before the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine could be a "smoking gun" in proving Russia's involvement in the incident, Oleg Ustenko, an economic adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, told Newsweek.

On May 30, a week before the dam's collapse, the Russian government approved a law aimed at "ensuring the safety of hydraulic structures" in the Ukrainian regions it proclaimed to have annexed in September 2022—the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, in Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia.

The legislation states that until January 1, 2028, investigations into accidents at hydro-technical structures that occurred as a result of military operations, sabotage and terrorist activities are prohibited. The decree was signed by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and came into effect on the day it was published.

The Soviet-era dam is part of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station in southern Ukraine on the Dnieper River. It was breached in the early hours of June 6, unleashing water on swaths of land as a long-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive to take back the seized territories kicked off.

Russia maintains that it wasn't behind its collapse and has accused Ukraine of blowing up the dam to distract attention from a "faltering" counteroffensive. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russian forces of blowing up the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station from inside the facility as part of a "terrorist attack."

Mounting evidence increasingly points to Russian involvement in the attack, Newsweek has been told.

'Smoking Gun'

Zelensky's economic adviser Ustenko said it would take someone with a "very vivid imagination" to believe that the passing of the legislation days before the dam's collapse was a coincidence.

"Of course, coincidences happen. However when the Russian government passes a special decree, about a special regime, on special territories, in case of special accidents on hydro technical objects—it looks suspicious," Ustenko told Newsweek.

"It looks like it could be evidence when the decree was signed by the Russian prime minister on May 30 and it became effective next day. Then one week later the greatest hydroelectric catastrophe happened in Kherson.

"The attack happened exactly in the same way 'accidents' were described in the official document related to the decree."

The dam's destruction was "well prepared and supported by Russian national legislation," said Ustenko. "Moreover, paragraph 10 in this legislation prohibits any investigation of such accidents till January 1st of 2028."

He added: "What is it if not a 'smoking gun' of a terrorist?"

Samantha de Bendern, associate fellow at the Chatham House think tank's Russia and Eurasia program, shared the Russian legislation on Twitter, writing: "Smoking gun for the #KakhovkaDam?"

The dam's collapse has caused widespread devastation in Ukraine's partially occupied Kherson region. Zelensky has described the situation as "an environmental bomb of mass destruction" that has left hundreds of thousands of people without normal access to drinking water.

Thousands have been ordered to evacuate from the partially occupied Kherson region amid rising water levels. Ukrainian animal welfare charity UAnimals coordinating rescue missions in the region told Newsweek it estimates that tens of thousands of animals will die due to flooding.

Ustenko, previously told Newsweek the overall price tag of the dam's destruction is "billions of dollars," while Ivan Fedorov, the mayor of the city of Melitopol in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region, told Newsweek the incident marked a "new stage of the war."

Kremlin Playbook

Keir Giles, senior consulting fellow at the Chatham House think tank's Russia and Eurasia program, said the May 30 legislation follows the Kremlin's playbook, which seeks "to pretend that it operates according to some semblance of legality."

"Russia has a perverse fascination with performative legalization of its most horrific crimes...it repeatedly puts in place in advance laws that give preemptive excuses for its actions," Giles told Newsweek.

"Sometimes this can give an indication of what is to come," said Giles, pointing to legislation on mass burials that was updated by Russia ahead of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and came into effect on February 1, 2022—weeks before the war began.

"So in the case of the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, the passing a week beforehand of this bizarrely specific law covering precisely those circumstances is indeed a clear indication of Russian intent," Giles added.

Newsweek reached out to the Russian Foreign Ministry via email for comment.

Anders Åslund, an economist and adjunct professor at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, said the May 30 decree "only concludes what we already knew."

"Russian propagandists advocated blowing up the dam. Ukrainian officials announced last fall that the Russians had mined both the dam and the connected tunnels in October-November 2022," Åslund, who has served as an economic adviser to the governments of both Russia and Ukraine, told Newsweek.

"Several explosions were recorded, which show that they were underwater, while the Russians claimed that the Ukrainians had bombed it from the air, which seems close to impossible for technical reasons. The explosions occurred on the Russian side.

"The Russians followed up blowing up several smaller dams—recorded by the Ukrainians. And now you have this law," he said, adding: "The evidence seems overwhelming that it was the Russians who did it."

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Update 06/12/23, 4.15 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include comment from Oleg Ustenko, an economic adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.