Russia and Ukraine have each requested emergency United Nations Security Council meetings to discuss Tuesday morning’s attack on the Kakkovka hydroelectric plant, and blamed each other for what they both agreed was an act of terror.
Moscow has spent over a year warning the world about attacks on the plant and its environs, including civilian infrastructure in the town of Novaya Kazkovka, where the dam is situated, using tactical ballistic missiles and its NATO-sourced HIMARS rocket artillery.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday that Kiev targeted the dam to allow it to transfer forces near the border with the Russian-held part of Kherson to other fronts. As evidence, he cited the construction of defensive emplacements in the area.
Former UN weapons inspector and US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter says there’s another compelling reason: a bid to attract fresh sympathy for Kiev from the West and cure the United States and its allies of growing “Ukraine fatigue” against the backdrop of Kiev’s failing counteroffensive, and the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius next month.
“The objective here is to create a source of international controversy,” Ritter told Sputnik. “The United States and Europe – the collective West, have shown a propensity to accept at face value anything the Ukrainian government says regarding allegations against Russia even though there’s no evidence to back it up. We saw this back in April of 2022 when Ukraine created the Bucha Massacre controversy, accusing Russian forces of slaughtering unarmed Ukrainian civilians in the Bucha suburb of Kiev. This was done in order to get the West to move away from the potential of a negotiated settlement between Ukraine and Russia that was about to be consummated in Istanbul on April 1.”
Ritter explained that if all that Kiev “can deliver [at the Vilnius] summit is yet another Ukrainian defeat with little hope of NATO being able to reverse this defeat,” the situation would threaten to become “dire” for the Zelensky regime as far as Western support is concerned.
“So what Ukraine is seeking to do through the destruction of the Kahkovka dam is to create a new controversy, a new outrage, around which they hope to rally international support for their cause, allowing the conflict to continue by rekindling a desire upon the West to continue to fund Ukraine both fiscally and to provide the tens of billions of dollars that would be necessary to rebuild the Ukrainian army after this current counteroffensive fails,” he said.
But Ritter isn’t sure that the ploy will work this time around, saying there appears to be “wide recognition around the world that the principle culprit in this is Ukraine.”
Why Not Russia?
The former UN weapons inspector also offered a compelling reason as to why Russia could not have destroyed the Kakhovka dam, despite claims to the contrary by the Ukrainian government and Western governments and media.
“Russia’s been warning about the intent of the Ukrainian government to destroy the Kakhovka dam for some time now,” Ritter recalled. “Back in October of last year, Russia sent a message to the Security Council of the United Nations saying that the Ukrainian government was threatening to destroy this dam and that the consequences of that would be grave. It appears that the Ukrainian government has indeed accomplished this mission. Of course the Ukrainian government is quick to blame Russia, saying that it’s the Russians who destroyed this. But the forensic evidence in terms of the ongoing artillery attacks against the structure by the Ukrainian military makes it clear that Ukraine is responsible.”
Ultimately, Ritter said, there’s “no amount of propaganda, no amount of falsification of data” that will allow Kiev “to sustain the notion that Russia did this. Ukraine committed an act of terrorism against its own civilian population, against Russia, and indeed against every nation in the Black Sea through the destruction of the Kakhovka dam. The question now is, what is the world going to do about it?”