Deaths confirmed in frontline dam rupture
RT | June 8, 2023
At least five people were killed and 41 were injured in the wake of the breach of the Kakhovka dam, the mayor of the city hosting the damaged structure has said.
“Reports came today that out of the seven people, who were grazing cattle, five died. We are in the process of evacuating the other two,” Novaya Kakhovka Mayor Vladimir Leontyev reported during an interview on Thursday.
The mayor previously advised that seven people were missing in the wake of the frontline dam breach, which occurred early on Tuesday morning. Ukraine and Russia accused each other of destroying it and exposing thousands of people living downstream near the Dnieper River to flooding.
Novaya Kakhovka is located on the left shore of the river and is controlled by Russia, while Ukraine controls the opposite side of the Kherson region. Ukrainian officials said there were some fatalities after the flooding on the right shore as well.
Water levels in the city rose by 12 meters after the dam was breached, before starting to slowly recede by Tuesday evening. Russian authorities estimated that 14 settlements were in the impact area. In addition to the direct damage to buildings, infrastructure and fields, the incident caused the draining of a water reservoir, which was used to feed a canal transporting fresh water to Russia’s Crimea.
Kiev claimed that Russian troops blew up the dam to prevent a possible amphibious operation across the Dnieper in Kherson Region. Ukrainian officials say that charges were planted inside the dam, which the Russian Defense Ministry has denied.
Moscow in turn blamed the Ukrainians, citing their record of shelling the strategically important facility. A Ukrainian general last year confirmed to The Washington Post that Kiev’s forces used US-supplied rocket artillery to hit one of the dam’s floodgates as a dry run for future attacks, should the military deem it necessary to cause a flood.
Russo-Ukrainian War: Dam!
A different kind of leak
BIG SERGE THOUGHT | JUNE 7, 2023
It is probably safe to say that the current week (June 5-11, 2023) is shaping up to be one of the most significant of the entire Russo-Ukrainian War. On Monday, all eyes were on the Ukrainian Armed Forces and their much anticipated summer counteroffensive, which began with a series of battallion level attacks across the breadth of the theater. After these initial assaults in the Ugledar, Bakhmut, and Soledar sectors began to collapse with heavy losses, it looked like the topic of discussion for the forseeable future would be Ukraine’s prospects for breaching strongly held Russian defenses.
Instead, the entire Ukrainian offensive was overshadowed by the sudden and entirely unexpected failure of the dam at Nova Kakhovka on the lower Dneiper.
Let’s be clear about one thing: the destruction of this dam marks a qualitative change in the course of the war; a dam represents an entirely different tier of target. There is a broad sense that dams are not legitimate military targets, as they fall in the category of “objects containing dangerous forces”, along with things like sea walls, dykes, and nuclear power plants. However, attacks on dams are not without precedent, and the legality of such attacks is a complicated and thorny topic – it is not so simple as to say “attacking dams is a war crime” in all circumstances.
In any case, the legalities are not the main point here. The destruction of dams has the potential to impact civilians on a scale which is an order of magnitude higher than anything which has yet occured. The reality of the war in Ukraine is that, due to the fact that most of the fighting is occuring in depopulated areas (along with Russia’s use of precision standoff weapons) civilian casualties have been mercifully low. Through May of this year, there were fewer than 9,000 recorded civilian deaths in Ukraine (including both Ukrainian and Russian controlled territories). This is a thankfully low number, compared (for example) to the war in Syria, where over 30,000 civilians are killed annually, or Iraq, where nearly 18,000 civilians died per year in the years following the American invasion in 2003.
A breaking dam, however, massively escalates the threat to civilians. Tens of thousands of civilians are in the flood path and have to be evacuated – but perhaps even more significantly, the destruction of the dam creates a major threat to agriculture. There are also rising escalation risks, and the last thing anybody wants is for dams to become a permanent menu item.
In this article, I want to conduct a preliminary assessment of the destruction of the dam, its consequences, and its potential causes. In particular, I want to sort through the evidence and get a sense of whether Ukraine or Russia is a more likely culprit. As it currently stands, the situation is in flux and it is not as if we will find either Zelensky’s or Putin’s fingerprints on the detonator, but we can at least put some puzzle pieces roughly into position and get a sense of what the picture looks like.
One thing that I want to mention, first off, is that we do not need to assume that the dam was intentionally destroyed. For example, in a now infamous Washington Post article, we learn that Ukraine experimented with hitting the dam with GMLRS rockets in an attempt to blow a hole and create a controlled flood. The sense that one gets here is that Ukraine did not necessarily intend to destroy the dam altogether, but rather that they wanted to create a limited breach and by extension a limited flood.
We will keep such possibilities in mind and consider them to be a distinction without difference. It’s entirely possible that one party or the other attempted to create a limited breach and accidentally brought about a much larger dam failure, but from our perspective this isn’t particularly different from intentionally bringing the whole thing down.
With this little distinction in mind, let’s begin to sort through what we know about this whole dam thing.
Water World
What on earth is (or was) the Kakhovka dam and what was its relation to the larger geography of the surrounding steppe?
To begin with, let’s make a brief note about the Dnieper. In its natural state, the Dnieper is a deeply difficult and turbulent river, characterized by a series of essentially unnavigable rapids. In fact, the Dnieper’s fiesty nature is precisely why the city of Kiev is where it is. 1200 years ago, when enterprising traders came rowing down the Dnieper (trying to get to the Black Sea, and thence to Constantinople), they found that certain portions of the river were impassable, and it was necessary to “portage” their boats – which means dragging them out of the river and overland to get past the rapids.
Portaging a boat on the middle Dnieper in 800 AD was dangerous. While disembarked and laboriously dragging the boat downstream, a trading party would be highly vulnerable to attack by the various warlike tribes which inhabited the region at the time. So it became necessary to build some sort of outpost stronghold which could serve as a waypoint to make passage down the river at least acceptably safe. Hence, Kiev – buit originally as a timber fortified trading post to ease passage along the middle Dnieper.
This is perhaps interesting, but as an aside it illustrates the basic point that for most of human history the Dnieper was not a friendly or easily navigable river akin to the Mississippi or the Rhine, and in the Soviet era a major effort was undertaken at last to tame it, in the form of a series of hydroelectric dams. These dams stiffled the rapids, generated electricity, smoothed the river’s course, and created enormous resevoirs, of which the Kakhovka resevoir is the largest by volume.
The Resevoirs and Dams of the Dneiper
The creation of the Kakhovka resevoir was also vitally linked to a series of canals which are fed from the resevoir. The most important of these is the Crimean canal, which carries Dnieper water to Crimea, but there are also a series of irrigation works which are vital to agricutlure in Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts.
Canals fed by the Kakhovka Resevoir System
So that is the basic structure of the region’s hydrology. We can therefore enumerate both upstream and downstream effects from the dam’s breaching. Upstream effects relate to the draining of the Kakhovka resevoir, which will in time lead to insufficient flow through the canals, depriving both Crimea and regional farmland of water. Downstream effects are those of the enormous flooding which is currently taking place.
A threat to the Kakhovka dam first entered the discourse last autumn, when General Surovikin made the stunning decision to withdraw Russian forces from west bank Kherson – a decision which he said was prompted by the fear that Ukraine might destroy the dam and create a flood which would trap Russian troops on the far shore. That decision certainly looks prescient now, but thanks to this earlier discussion there was already a bevy of analysis conducted predicting what the flood path might look like.
Before and After
As per the latest information as of this writing, the river has not yet crested and water levels continue to rise, but this has already turned into a vast and extremely disruptive flood. This is a severe humanitarian and ecological disaster with implications for the military situation in Ukraine. The question is – who did it?
Incriminating Evidence
Let’s start by looking at the most direct evidence potentially implicating Russia or Ukraine. I’d like to start by looking at an allegedly damning (haha) video which has been circulating rapidly, which purports to confirm that Russia blew the dam.
The video in question allegedly shows a Russian soldier giving an interview in December in which he boasts that the Russin army mined the Kakhovka dam and plan to destroy it to create a cascading flood and wash away the Ukrainian troops downstream.
Not to be blunt, but this is an egregiously bad bit of trickery and it’s difficult to believe that people are falling for it. To begin with, this is an interview with a Ukrainian blogger and youtuber who goes by the screen name “Edgar Myrotvorets” – interestingly naming himself after the infamous Ukrainian kill list. The “Russian soldier” who he is interviewing is allegedly a gentleman named Yegor Guzenko. Yegor seems to be an interesting fellow – he pops up on social media periodically largely to confess to stereotyped Russian war crimes, like kidnapping civilians and executing Ukrainian prisoners, and of course blowing up dams.
Essentially, we are being asked to believe that there is a Russian soldier out there who is giving interviews to Ukrainian media in which he confesses to all of Russia’s nefarious activities, and then goes about his duties without being stopped or punished. It should be pretty obvious that Yegor is actually Yehor, and is not a Russian soldier at all but a Ukrainian impersonator – funnily enough, Yegor also has a beard even though the Russian MOD has been cracking down on facial hair.
In any case, Yegor’s explosive interview is the main piece of direct evidence which is being used to prove that Russia blew up the dam.
In contrast, the evidence implicating Ukraine is pretty straightforward: they openly talked about experimenting with ways to breach the dam, and have actively shot rockets and artillery shells at it in the past. We refer back to the infamous WaPo article, and in particular the key passage:
Kovalchuk [commander of Ukrainian Operative Commandment South] considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages.
The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort. He held off.
We even have footage of Ukraine striking the dam (particularly the roadway on top of it) from last year – footage which was incorrectly shared this week as being video of the strike that destroyed the dam on monday.
There is also a variety of circumstantial evidence worth sorting through.
A popular point being raised by the Ukrainian infosphere is the fact that the Kakhovka dam was under Russian control – therefore, they argue that only Russia could therefore have planted explosives to createa breach (at this point, we do not know the technical method used to create the breach).
I rather think that Russia’s control of the dam makes it much less likely that they are responsible, for the following basic reason. First, having control over the dam’s gates means that Russia had the power to manipulate water levels downstream at will. If they wanted to create flooding, they could have simply opened all the gates. With the dam now breached, they have lost this control.
The situation is very much akin to the destruction of the Nordstream pipeline (which now seems to be being blamed on Ukraine, rather predictibly). Both Nordstream and the Kakhovka dam were tools that Russia had the power to swing in one direction or the other. These were levers that Russia could move from on to off and back again. The destruction of these tools actually robs Russia of control, and in both cases we are asked to believe that Russia intentionally disabled its own levers.
Cui Bono?
Ultimately, any analysis would be incomplete without asking a very basic question: who benefits from the destruction of the dam? This is where it gets a bit complicated, largely because there are so many concerns at cross-currents to each other. Let’s enumerate a few.
First, the flooding disproportionately affects the Russian side of the river. This has been pretty thoroughly established. The eastern bank of the river is lower and thus more affected by flooding. We knew this in the academic sense, and now satellite imagery confirms that it is indeed the east bank that has suffered most of the flooding.
This has had the effect of washing out prepared Russian defenses, including minefields, and forcing withdrawls out of the flood zone, with plenty of imagery coming in of Russian soldiers standing in water up to their waists.
Secondly, the Upstream effects disroportionately affect Russia as well. Remember, the implications of the dam breach are not just downstream flooding, but also the draining of the resevoir, and this is particularly bad for Russia. First, in the long run this endangers the water flow through the Crimean Canal, which undermines a key Russian war aim. One of Russia’s primary motivations for launching this war in the first place was precisely to secure the Crimean Canal, which Ukraine had dammed up in order to choke off the peninsula’s water supply. Any analysis of the issue needs to aknowledge that, if you believe Russia blew the dam, you are essentially saying that they voluntarily trashed one of their primary war aims.
But it’s not just the Crimean Canal – there are also the variety of irrigation canal networks which sustain agriculture in east-bank Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts – oblasts which Russia has annexed and which are firmly under Russian control.
The only way to spin all this (and there are some people, like Peter Zeihan, trying to spin it this way) as being in Russian interests is to argue that Russia expects to lose control of all this territory (including Crimea) and is going scorched earth in anticipation of defeat. But to believe this, you need to believe that Russia is badly losing the war and is on the verge of total defeat, and if you believe this I have nothing to say to you except to direct you to this link.
Third, we need to note the effects that this will have on a potential amphibious operation. In the short term, this obviously turns the lower Dneiper into a dangerous morass, and as the water subsides it will leave plenty of mess and mud which will make a river crossing very difficult for several weeks. In the long run, however, crossing the river may actually be easier – and here is where I want to make what I think is a critical point.
As long as Russia had control of the Kakhovka dam, they had the power to create flooding downstream at will. The optimal time to do this would be while Ukraine was attempting an amphibious assault out of Kherson. If you created flooding during such an assault, you would be complicating the crossing and washing out Ukraine’s beachheads. Obviously, Russia has now lost the ability to do this.
We already know that Russia understands how and why to manipulate the water levels to its advantage. Earlier this year, they were actually keeping the Kakhovka resevoir levels extremely low, most likely to minimize the threat of Ukraine breaching the dam (as Surovikin was apparently quite worried about). However, in recent weeks they closed up the gates and filled the resevoir up to the top.
Kakhova Resevoir Levels
Why would they do this? It seems likely that Russia would want to retain water so that they could create a surge (not by destroying the dam, but by opening the gates up) to disrupt any Ukrainian attempt to cross the river. Again, the appeal of the dam for Russia is that it is a lever which can be throttled up and down as the situation calls for it. The breach of the dam, however, robs them of this tool.
This brings us to the corollary point, which is that the breach has two major benefits for Ukraine. Not only is it washing out Russian defenses and disproportionately disrupting the Russian side of the river, but Russia has now lost the ability to create a flood at the opportune moment later on.
If I had to make my guess about what happened to the dam, it would be as follows:
I believe Russia was retaining water to maintain the power to create flooding in the event of a Ukrainian amphibious assault across the lower Dnieper. Ukraine attempted to nullify this tool with a limited breach of the dam (of the sort which they rehearsed last December) but the dam failure cascaded beyond what they intended due to A) the resevoir being at extremely high levels, putting excessive stress on the strucure, and B) previous damage to the structure from prior Ukrainian shelling and rocketry attacks. Indeed, images of the dam seem to suggest that it failed in stages, with a single span leaking before the collapse metastasized.
I find the idea that Russia destroyed the dam to be very difficult to believe, for the following reasons (in recap):
- Flooding disproportionately affected the Russian side of the river and destroyed Russian positions.
- The loss of the dam does severe damage to core Russian interests, including Crimean water access and agriculture on the steppe.
- The dam, while intact, was a tool which Russia was using to manipulate the water level freely.
- Of the two beligerent parties, only Ukraine has openly shot at the dam and talked about breaching it.
We may learn, of course, that there was some accidental failure of some kind, potentially due to the water tug of war being waged between Russia and Ukraine as they try to balance the flow of the river. But in a wartime situation, when a major infrastructure object is destroyed, it is most rational to assume intentional destruction, and in this situation the costs to critical Russian infrastructure and the loss of a valuable tool for controlling the river make it extremely difficult to believe that Russia would blow up its own dam.
Ultimately, perhaps your judgement on the matter simply reflects your larger belief about who is winning the war. Breaching a dam is, after all, rather a desperation move – so maybe the question to ask is: who do you think is more desperate? Whose back is against the wall here – Russia, or Ukraine?
Turkiye’s Proposal For A Kakhovka Dam Investigation Committee Is A Genius Soft Power Move
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JUNE 7, 2023
Turkish President Erdogan proposed the creation of a multilateral committee for investigating the Kakhovka Dam explosion during a call with President Putin on Wednesday. He suggested that it could comprise the two conflicting parties, the UN, and members of the international community such as his country, which has experience mediating between Moscow and Kiev during their grain deal talks. This was a genius soft power move that’ll powerfully shape global perceptions about this incident.
Russia and Ukraine blame one another for this terrorist attack, and while many might have predicted that the US would take its proxy’s side, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday that “we cannot say conclusively what happened at this point.” This stance is almost certainly attributable to the fact that Ukrainian Major General Andrey Kovalchuk boasted to the Washington Post in December about how Kiev tested blowing up the dam with US-supplied HIMARS missiles late last year.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova made sure that the entire world knew about this too by bringing it up during a press briefing the day after.
She rhetorically asked US officials “Were you aware of how American weapons, the weapons that are being supplied to Ukraine, are used? That trial tests of a terrorist attack against civilian infrastructure in third countries are being made? These are the questions that we directly pose in the public space before the White House; you must answer them.”
Considering that the US officially regards the dam’s destruction as a war crime, which its Alternative Representative to the UN for Special Political Affairs Robert Wood emphasized during Tuesday’s Security Council meeting about this, it has every reason to support the investigation that Turkiye just proposed. As for Kiev, it insists that Russia was to blame, so refusing to participate in a truly neutral multilateral investigation would come off as incredibly suspicious by suggesting that it has something to hide.
The US and Ukraine, which are the principal antagonists in the NATO-Russian proxy war, are therefore pressured to go along with this initiative from their mutual Turkish partner lest they risk stoking speculation that they’re afraid of a dark truth emerging. Neither can credibly imply that Ankara has any ulterior motives in proposing this investigation either since it’s a NATO ally that’s consistently voted against Russia at the UNGA and has even armed Kiev with drones for use against Moscow’s troops.
Therein lies the reason why President Erdogan’s proposal was such a genius soft power move since it puts those two in a dilemma. Going along with the investigation risks revealing incontrovertible evidence that Kiev blew up the Kakhovka Dam while declining to participate makes them look guilty in the court of public opinion. Regardless of whatever they choose to do, Turkiye comes off as responsible member of the international community, which boosts its global prestige and especially that of its multipolar leader.
Israel displaces more Palestinian families in occupied Jerusalem
MEMO | June 7, 2023
The Israeli occupation authorities demolished several Palestinian homes in occupied Jerusalem on Tuesday, displacing three extended families, Anadolu has reported.
Eyewitnesses told the news agency that Israeli police officers accompanied the team from the Jerusalem municipality that demolished the house owned by the Totah family in Wadi Al-Juz. The house was built 24 years ago. Yesterday’s demolition was the fourth for this family; three other homes were demolished in March because they didn’t have building licences. A stable near the house was also demolished.
Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation authorities forced the Burkan, Nassar and Al-Tawil families to demolish their own homes, which consisted of five apartments in Silwan’s Wadi Qaddoum. The families either had to demolish their homes or pay large fines to have the municipality do it. At least 30 people were rendered homeless by the demolitions, including children.
Earlier this week, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that the Israeli occupation authorities have demolished, forced local people to demolish or seized 290 Palestinian-owned structures across the West Bank and Jerusalem in the first quarter of 2023.
“All but 19 of the structures were targeted for lacking building permits, which are nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain,” explained OCHA. “As a result, 413 people, including 194 children, were displaced, and the livelihoods or access to services of over 11,000 others were affected.”
OCHA added that, “The number of structures targeted in the first quarter of 2023 has increased by 46 per cent compared with the same period in 2022, which already saw the highest number of demolitions recorded in the West Bank and Jerusalem since 2016.”
Ukraine blew up Kakhovka dam as revenge for failed offensive – Kremlin
RT | June 6, 2023
Ukrainian forces sabotaged the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam in Russia’s Kherson Region in a bid to deprive Crimea of drinking water and distract from its faltering counteroffensive, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed on Tuesday.
The dam was partially destroyed early on Tuesday morning, sending torrents of water downstream and flooding towns and villages along the path of the Dnieper River.
“We are talking about a deliberate sabotage by the Ukrainian side,” Peskov told reporters. “This sabotage could potentially lead to very serious consequences for several tens of thousands of inhabitants of the region, environmental consequences and consequences of a different nature, which have yet to be established.”
Peskov claimed that one of the key goals of the attack was to deprive Crimea of water. Crimea’s 2 million residents largely receive their water from the North Crimean Canal, which is fed from the reservoir above the Kakhovka dam.
“This sabotage is also connected with the fact that, having launched large-scale offensive operations two days ago, the Ukrainian armed forces are not achieving their goals,” Peskov continued. Russia’s Defense Ministry has said it repelled several large-scale attacks in the southern sector of the front in recent days. These “offensive actions are choking,” Peskov stated.
Ukrainian officials and their European backers have accused Russia of blowing up the dam, with European Council President Charles Michel calling the attack “a war crime.” Moscow “strongly rejects” the accusation, Peskov said.
While the flooding now makes it difficult for Ukrainian forces to cross the Dnieper and attack Russia’s defensive lines, the destruction of the dam also appears to aid a number of Ukraine’s key objectives. The flooding mostly threatens the eastern bank of the river, where Russian troops withdrew to last year amid concerns that the Ukrainian military would blow up the dam.
With the dam destroyed, the level of the Dnieper has fallen further upstream, including at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant. Ukrainian troops made several attempts to cross the river to recapture the plant from Russian forces last year, and lowering the water level would remove a major obstacle to future attempts. Additionally, the Soviet-era plant depends on water from the Dnieper to cool its reactors and its spent fuel rods.
The Ukrainian military conducted a test strike on the dam using an American-supplied HIMARS launcher last year, Ukrainian General Andrey Kovalchuk told the Washington Post in December.
Two months earlier, Russia’s envoy to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, warned the UN Security Council that Kiev’s forces were considering a “reckless” attack on the dam with sea mines or missiles. “The authorities in Kiev and their Western backers will bear full responsibility for all the consequences of such a devastating scenario,” Nebenzia cautioned.
Don’t Forget WaPo’s Report From December About Kiev’s Plans To Blow Up The Kakhovka Dam
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JUNE 6, 2023
The partial destruction of the Kakhovka Dam on early Tuesday morning saw Kiev and Moscow exchange accusations about who’s to blame, but a report from the Washington Post (WaPo) in late December extends credence to the Kremlin’s version of events. Titled “Inside the Ukrainian counteroffensive that shocked Putin and reshaped the war”, its journalists quoted former commander of November’s Kherson Counteroffensive Major General Andrey Kovalchuk who shockingly admitted to planning this war crime:
“Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages. The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort. He held off.”
His remark about how “the step remained a last resort” is pertinent to recall at present considering that the first phase of Kiev’s NATO–backed counteroffensive completely failed on Monday according to the Russian Ministry of Defense. Just like Ukraine launched its proxy invasion of Russia in late May to distract from its loss in the Battle of Artyomovsk, so too it seems it might have gone through with Kovalchuk’s planned war crime to distract from this most recent embarrassment as well.
The above-mentioned explanation isn’t as far-fetched as some might initially think either. After all, one of complexity theory’s precepts is that initial conditions at the onset of non-linear processes can disproportionately shape the outcome. In this context, the first failed phase of Kiev’s counteroffensive risked ruining the entire campaign, which could have prompted its planners to employ Kovalchuk’s “last resort” in order to introduce an unexpected variable into the equation that might improve their odds.
Russia had over 15 months to entrench itself in Ukraine’s former eastern and southern regions that Kiev still claims as its own through the construction of various defensive structures and associated contingency planning so as to maintain its control over those territories. It therefore follows that even the most properly supplied and thought-out counteroffensive wasn’t going to be a walk in the park contrary to the Western public’s expectations, thus explaining why the first phase just failed.
This reality check shattered whatever wishful thinking expectations Kiev might have had since it showed that the original plan of swarming the Line of Contact (LOC) entails considerable costs that reduce the chances of it succeeding unless something serious happens behind the front lines to distract the Russian defenders. Therein lies the strategic reason behind partially destroying the Kakhovka Dam on Tuesday morning exactly as Kovalchuk proved late last year is possible to pull off per his own admission to WaPo.
The first of Kiev’s goals that this terrorist attack served was to prompt global concern about the safety of the Russian-controlled Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which relies on water from the now-rapidly-depleting Kakhovka Reservoir for cooling. The International Atomic Energy Agency said that there’s “no immediate nuclear safety risk”, but a latent one can’t be ruled out. Should a crisis transpire, then it could throw Russia’s defenses in northern Zaporozhye Region into chaos.
The second goal is that the downstream areas of Kherson Region, which are divided between Kiev and Moscow, have now been flooded. Although the water might eventually recede after some time, this could complicate Russia’s defensive plans along the left bank of the Dnieper River. Taken together with the consequences connected to the first scenario, this means that a significant part of the riparian front behind the LOC could soon soften up to facilitate the next phase of Kiev’s counteroffensive.
In fact, the geographic scope of Kiev’s “unconventional softening operation” might even expand to Crimea due to the threat that Tuesday morning’s terrorist attack could pose to the peninsula’s water supply via its eponymous canal. The regional governor said that sufficient supplies remain for now but that the coming days will reveal the level of risk. While Crimea still managed to survive Kiev’s blockade of the canal for eight years, there’s no doubt that this development is disadvantageous for Russia.
The fourth strategic goal builds upon the three that were already discussed and concerns the psychological warfare component of this attack. On the foreign front, Kiev’s gaslighting that Moscow is guilty of “ecocide” was amplified by the Mainstream Media in spite of Kovalchuk’s damning admission to WaPo last December in order to maximize global pressure on Russia, while the domestic front is aimed at sowing panic in Ukraine’s former regions with the intent of further softening Russia’s defenses there.
And finally, the last strategic goal that was served by partially destroying the Kakhovka Dam is that Russia might soon be thrown into a dilemma. Kiev’s “unconventional softening operation” along the Kherson-Zaporozhye LOC could divide the Kremlin’s focus from the Belgorod-Kharkov and Donbass fronts, which could weaken one of those three and thus risk a breakthrough. The defensive situation could become even more difficult for Russia if Kiev expands the conflict by attacking Belarus and/or Moldova too.
To be absolutely clear, the military-strategic dynamics of the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine still favor Russia for the time being, though that’s precisely why Kiev carried out Tuesday morning’s terrorist attack in a desperate attempt to reshape them in its favor. This assessment is based on the observation that Russia’s victory in the Battle of Artyomovsk shows that it’s able to hold its own against NATO in the “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” that the bloc’s chief declared in mid-February.
Furthermore, even the New York Times admitted that the West’s sanctions failed to collapse Russia’s economy and isolate it, while some of its top influencers also admitted that it’s impossible to deny the proliferation of multipolar processes in the 15 months since the special operation began. These include German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, former US National Security Council member Fiona Hill, and Goldman Sachs’ President of Global Affairs Jared Cohen.
The military-strategic dynamics described in the preceding two paragraphs will inevitably doom the West to defeat in the New Cold War’s largest proxy conflict thus far unless something major unexpectedly happens to change them, which is exactly what Kiev was trying to achieve via its latest terrorist attack. The reason why few foresaw this is because Kovalchuk admitted to WaPo last December that his side had previously planned to blow up part of the Kakhovka Dam as part of its Kherson Counteroffensive.
It therefore seemed unthinkable that Kiev would ultimately do just that over half a year later and then gaslight that Moscow was to blame when the Mainstream Media itself earlier reported the existence of Ukraine’s terrorist plans after quoting the same Major General who bragged about them at the time. Awareness of this fact doesn’t change what happened, but it can have a powerful impact on the Western public’s perceptions of this conflict, which is why WaPo’s report should be brought to their attention.
The UK’s “Chilling” Secret Unit That Monitored Lockdown Dissent
More revelations about the secretive Counter Disinformation Unit
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 3, 2023
A clandestine UK Government unit dubbed the Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU) has been implicated in a troubling endeavor to curb and control online discussions about the controversial Covid-19 lockdown policies. The covert operation allegedly involved the collaboration of social media companies in a strategic bid to quell supposed domestic “threats.”
According to revelations from Freedom of Information requests and data protection requests from The Telegraph, posts critical of Covid-19 restrictions, including those questioning mass vaccination of children, were systematically removed.
Social media companies are now under scrutiny following allegations that their technologies were deployed to thwart the wide circulation or promotion of posts tagged as potentially problematic by the CDU or its Cabinet Office equivalent.
The files revealed the surreptitious monitoring of critics of the Government’s Covid plans. Artificial intelligence firms were reportedly enlisted by the government to search social media platforms, flagging any discussions opposing vaccine passports.
In a startling revelation, the BBC was implicated in clandestine government policy discussions regarding this alleged misinformation.
The CDU, hosted by the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS), operated a “trusted flagger” system with major social media companies. This mechanism expedited requests for content removal. The CDU, still operational, was formed in 2019, initially focusing on the European elections, later shifting its attention to the pandemic.
Critics, including MPs and freedom of speech campaigners, have labeled the revelations as “truly chilling” and a strategy tantamount to “censoring British citizens” — a tactic likened to those of the Chinese Communist Party.
“Any attempt by governments to shut down legitimate debate is hugely concerning, but to discover that DCMS actively sought to censor the views of those who were speaking up for children’s welfare is truly chilling,” said Miriam Cates, a Conservative MP to The Telegraph.
A government spokesman refuted the allegations, stating that the unit was designed to track narratives and trends using publicly available information to safeguard public health and national security. The spokesman insisted that the unit never monitored individuals and had a strict policy against referring journalists and MPs to social media platforms.
Israeli forces shoot Palestinian toddler in the head
MEMO | June 2, 2023
A two-year-old Palestinian toddler has been severely wounded after being shot in the head by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank yesterday.
According to the Wafa news agency, the toddler was shot in the head while sitting in a car with his 40-year-old father in front of their home.
The toddler was flown to Israel’s Sheba hospital by helicopter and is currently in a critical condition, while his father, who was shot in the arm, was driven to a hospital in Ramallah.
Local Palestinian activist, Bilal Tamimi, told Wafa that the toddler was shot in the head as a result of a raid imposed by Israeli occupation forces on the village.
The army said it was opening an investigation into the shooting, saying it “regrets harm to noncombatants” and that it does “everything in its power to prevent such incidents.”
Meanwhile, Naji Tamimi, the head of the Nabi Saleh Village Council, said Israeli soldiers locked the iron gate at the village entrance and proceeded to invade several neighbourhoods and fire live rounds at protesters.
Tension has been escalating across the occupied West Bank for months, amid Israeli raids on Palestinian towns.
More than 155 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli occupation forces this year, including 26 children, according to Palestinian figures. Last year was deemed the deadliest for the occupied West Bank since 2015, but this year’s death toll has already exceeded the number of those killed in 2022.
Family of 24-Year-Old Who Died From COVID Vaccine Sues DOD in ‘Groundbreaking Case’
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 31, 2023
The family of a 24-year-old man who died from complications of COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis today filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), which oversaw the development and distribution of the drug under Operation Warp Speed.
Ray Flores, the attorney representing the estate of George Watts Jr. filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the DOD and Lloyd Austin III in his official capacity as defense secretary.
The lawsuit alleges the DOD engaged in “willful misconduct” by continuing to exclusively allow distribution of the stockpiled version of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine that had been authorized for emergency use even after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted full approval to a different vaccine, Comirnaty.
According to the complaint, the DOD “capitalized on a quintessential ‘bait and switch’ fraud,” using the fact that Comirnaty was FDA-approved to bolster its claims that the vaccine authorized for emergency use was “safe and effective,” in a move that intentionally misled millions of Americans.
The DOD did this despite being fully aware that drugs granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) cannot legally be marketed as “safe and effective” because the FDA standard for EUA is only that drugs “may be effective.”
That means the DOD intentionally, without justification and with disregard for the risks, misrepresented an experimental vaccine as “safe and effective” when it could not legally use that terminology, the lawsuit states.
As a result, the lawsuit alleges, George Watts Jr. was misled into taking the investigational vaccine and he died as a result.
Attorney Michael Baum told The Defender in an email:
“This groundbreaking case filed by George Watts Jr.’s surviving family may provide a path for other Covid vaccine-injured individuals to seek recovery for their injuries.
“The Watts family’s complaint shines a light on the willful steps the Department of Defense took that led to Mr. Watts’ Pfizer-vaccine-induced death from myocarditis. Most people are unaware of the Department of Defense’s directing the development and distribution of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine …
“The DOD’s actions led to Mr. Watts’ improper injection with the unapproved vaccine. The Watts family’s case provides an opportunity for a wider public awareness of how the Covid vaccine sausage got made under DOD’s irresponsible guidance and the tragic results of that conduct for Mr. Watts and unfortunately much of the American public.”
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) is funding the lawsuit.
Watts waited for a vaccine he thought was ‘safe and effective’
Watts was a student at Corning Community College in Corning, New York, when in the summer of 2021, the school mandated the COVID-19 vaccine for all students attending fall classes. The mandate was part of the mandate at the State University of New York (SUNY), a network of 64 colleges and universities.
Watts waited to get vaccinated until the FDA “approved” the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine and got his first dose at Guthrie Robert Packer Hospital in Pennsylvania on Aug. 27, 2021. He was administered the EUA Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
The FDA approved the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine on Aug. 23, 2021, but the DOD didn’t make it available.
Despite experiencing side effects from the first dose, Watts understood the vaccine to be “safe and effective,” so he took a second dose at the same location on Sept. 17, 2021.
Following the second dose, Watts experienced more severe side effects, including numbness in his extremities, difficulty grasping and holding objects, a sinus infection, cough and sensitivity to light. He visited the ER at the Guthrie hospital on Oct. 12, 2021, also complaining of a lump on the left side of his neck.
The hospital diagnosed him with sinusitis and prescribed an antibiotic. Watts returned to the ER on October 19, 2021, concerned that he was not improving.
After that, his health continued to decline.
On Oct. 27, 2021, at home with his mother, Watts began coughing up blood and then became unresponsive. His mother called 911 and administered CPR.
Watts was taken to the ER where he was found to be in cardiac arrest and subsequently died. He had no previous medical history that could explain his sudden death. Watts also tested negative for COVID-19 in a post-mortem test.
The medical examiner ruled his cause of death to be “complications of COVID-19 vaccine-related myocarditis.” His death certificate also listed COVID-19 vaccine-related myocarditis as the sole immediate cause of death.
An independent physician, Dr. Sanjay Verma, also attested the vaccine was the proximate cause of death as alleged in the complaint.
PREP Act protects vaccine producers, not vaccine-injured people
Watts’ family first sought compensation for his death under the Health Resources & Services Administration’s Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP).
The CICP was established under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, which protects “covered persons” — such as pharmaceutical companies, or the DOD in this case — from liability for injuries sustained from “countermeasures,” such as vaccines and medications, administered during a public health emergency.
The only exception to PREP Act immunity is if a countermeasure-related injury is caused by “willful misconduct” by a covered person or entity.
Since the start of the pandemic, people claiming injuries related to COVID-19 vaccines and other countermeasures submitted 11,686 requests for compensation.
Of those, only 23 have been declared eligible for compensation. Most of those are undergoing a “medical benefits review” to determine payment. Since last month, when the CICP started making payments to COVID-19 vaccine-injured people, it has made four payments — amounting to a total of $8,592.52. Three of the claims were for myocarditis.
Watts’ family filed a request for benefits with the CICP in August 2022. They received no determination from the CICP within the 240-day period in which the CICP is supposed to respond to complaints.
As a result, to seek compensation for the loss of Watts’ life, his family is suing the DOD.
The DOD, Operation Warp Speed and the COVID vaccines
In January 2020, then-Health Secretary Alex M. Azar of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared a public health emergency for COVID-19.
The emergency declaration allowed the health secretary to make a PREP Act declaration so the FDA could issue an EUA for an unapproved vaccine or other “countermeasure” to address the emergency if the following emergency circumstances exist:
“(1) the existence of a serious or life-threatening disease; (2) a product ‘may be effective’ in treating or preventing it; (3) there is ‘no adequate, approved, and available alternative to the product for diagnosing, preventing or treating such disease or condition;’ (4) a risk-benefit analysis that measures both the known and potential benefits of the product against the known and potential risks of the product is positive; and (5) that the patient’s option to accept or decline the product is protected through informed consent.”
On May 15, 2020, the Trump White House announced Operation Warp Speed — a partnership between the White House and the DOD to accelerate the development, production and distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Two months later, the DOD signed a contract with Pfizer to manufacture hundreds of millions of doses of its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, guaranteeing that any vaccine produced under the contract would be protected under the PREP Act and therefore not subject to liability.
The FDA issued an EUA for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Dec. 11, 2020, and Army Gen. Gustave F. Perna, Operation Warp Speed chief operating officer, announced the vaccine would be rapidly distributed across the country.
Drugs fully approved by the FDA must be found to be “safe, pure, and potent,” but EUA drugs are held to a lower standard — they are required only to demonstrate that they “may be effective,” according to the FDA.
But Perna and his boss, Austin III, conveyed the message that the EUA vaccines were “safe and effective,” and urged the healthcare community to do the same, in order to “counter widespread misinformation” about the vaccines, the lawsuit alleges.
After the FDA approved the Comirnaty vaccine, the DOD did not initiate its production and distribution but instead continued to distribute existing Pfizer EUA products.
As a result, although Watts waited for the COVID-19 vaccine to be FDA-approved, he still received a version of the vaccine that had not been FDA-approved as “safe and effective.”
According to the lawsuit, the DOD blurred the line between the two legally distinct vaccines, promoting the idea that the COVID-19 vaccine was FDA-approved and therefore “safe and effective” — while administering the vaccine that was only “authorized,” and therefore not legally allowed to be described as “safe.”
The DOD knowingly blurred this line, the lawsuit alleges, because it had already been found liable for violating informed consent and of imposing an experimental vaccine. In the 2004 case of Doe v. Rumsfeld, et al., a federal court ruled the DOD could not mandate the EUA anthrax vaccine for service members because forcing them to take an experimental vaccine violated their right to informed consent.
That ruling stated that absent informed consent or a presidential waiver, “The United States cannot demand that members of the armed forces also serve as guinea pigs for experimental drugs.”
The current lawsuit further alleges that the DOD knowingly deceived Watts and other Americans for the purpose of mass human experimentation, which violates protections provided by the Nuremberg Code.
According to the complaint, the DOD committed “willful misconduct,” having “deliberately misled Mr. Watts and the public at large by blurring the critical distinction between EUA and fully licensed vaccines,” which would nullify the protections afforded the DOD under the PREP Act.
It concludes that Watts died because he believed he was receiving safe and effective vaccines, but in fact “received the deadly ones.”
The lawsuit seeks “general, special, compensatory and punitive damages.”
Commenting on the significance of the case, Kim Mack Rosenberg, acting outside general counsel for CHD, told The Defender :
“The PREP Act purports to provide an extraordinary liability shield to the government, manufacturers, distributors, and others, related to COVID-19 vaccines and other so-called countermeasures covered by the act. The Watts complaint is an important and unprecedented challenge to that liability shield.
“The complaint threads the act’s needle by pointing the finger squarely at Operation Warp Speed leadership while raising critical legal challenges to the act’s protection, particularly where, as is alleged in the Watts complaint, a defendant like the Department of Defense has engaged in willful misconduct.
“But the complaint does more than that. It will educate about the PREP Act’s far reach, actions by the DOD during the ‘state of emergency,’ and the general lack of accountability for entities and individuals protected by the PREP Act.
“The public needs to understand that this act intentionally allows potentially bad actors to go unpunished. Here, a young man lost his life, and the government has remained silent, hiding behind a legal shield.
“That is not justice for George Watts or anyone else.”
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Featured Video
Larry Johnson: U.S. Desperation Grows as Iran Is Winning
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
A low-fat, high-carb diet has been the largest public health experiment in history. It’s past time for a rethink.
By Malcolm Kendrick | RT | November 25, 2020
New research suggests that four billion people globally will be overweight in 2050. This trend can be traced back to the ‘low-fat, high-carb’ guidelines first issued in the 70s, and should prompt a major U-turn on dietary advice.
A recent report from the Potsdam Institute predicts that by 2050 there will be four billion overweight people in the world, with one-and-a-half billion of them obese. This is not entirely surprising. The world has been getting fatter for years, and things do not seem to be slowing down.
Why is this happening? … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Pirates of Mediterranean: Israel does as it pleases in the Sea of Three Continents
- Minab children massacre not ‘unfortunate situation’ but ‘heinous war crime’: Tehran
- OPCW Forced To Pay Damages To Whistleblower Who Found Evidence Of False Flag In Syria
- Iran can thrive under blockade, the US and its allies cannot
- Iran slams US leadership, debunking fabrications, false war costs
- Here’s why Iran is sovereign and Germany is not
- Israel pours $730m into global propaganda machine as reputation collapses
- Leaked audios reveal pro-Israel groups ‘paid’ for US pardon of convicted drug trafficker Juan Orlando Hernandez
- Congress Extends Section 702 Spy Program 45 Days
- Zionists Are Gunning for Your Freedom of Speech
- If Americans Knew
- Israel conducts farthest-ever strike in long history of attacks on Gaza humanitarian aid flotillas
- In Gaza, Israel commits 10+ ceasefire violations a day – Daily Update
- US ships 6,500 tons of munitions, equipment to Israel in 24 hours
- A New Library in Gaza Rises From the Ashes of Destruction
- Israel’s top Jewish religious body ‘refuses to condemn’ smashing of Jesus statue
- Nun assaulted in Jerusalem amid ‘pattern’ of anti-Christian attacks by Israelis
- Former Tik Tok official describes massive pressure from Israel lobby
- Amid ceasefire violations and genocide, Israel commits piracy – Daily Update
- Five Laws and Standards That Require the US Cut Off Weapons to Israel
- Israel’s diabolical killing machine and how it targets journalists.
- No Tricks Zone
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
Aletho News 