I am 100% certain that this dam collapsed accidentally. If there wasn't a war on, you could do a proper investigation and assign blame, ie "it was THESE explosives" or "it was THOSE artillery shells", but neither side intended for this to happen and it did because the dam wasn't being properly maintained and was taking collateral damage from the fighting.
Destroying critical infrastructure has been a strategy of both armies for most of the war.
It's difficult to know exactly who did it, because it doesn't seem to benefit anyone. But this whole war has been a shit show from the start, so who is to say which group might have thought it would work to their advantage.
I think it's likely that Russia rigged it to blow "just in case", but the fact that it was visibly failing before it catastrophically failed, the fact that there were explosions before and after the collapse, the fact that it seems to fuck over both sides all make me pretty sure it wasn't intentional and now both sides are claiming that the other did it and that it's actually good that it happened as a form of cope.
I am 100% certain that this dam collapsed accidentally. If there wasn't a war on, you could do a proper investigation and assign blame, ie "it was THESE explosives" or "it was THOSE artillery shells", but neither side intended for this to happen and it did because the dam wasn't being properly maintained and was taking collateral damage from the fighting.
Destroying critical infrastructure has been a strategy of both armies for most of the war.
It's difficult to know exactly who did it, because it doesn't seem to benefit anyone. But this whole war has been a shit show from the start, so who is to say which group might have thought it would work to their advantage.
I think it's likely that Russia rigged it to blow "just in case", but the fact that it was visibly failing before it catastrophically failed, the fact that there were explosions before and after the collapse, the fact that it seems to fuck over both sides all make me pretty sure it wasn't intentional and now both sides are claiming that the other did it and that it's actually good that it happened as a form of cope.