I saw dennis say that the dam was blown up by the rus but then all the military consequences that he gave for the blown dam seemed to belong to the ukes.
one thing he didn’t mention was that when the lake behind the dam drains—then it will be comparitivively easy to throw a pontoon bridge across the dneiper as it will be much smaller.
ukes crossing to the other side will find few Rus troops.
The Rus will see the danger instantly.
But what do they do? They have only so many troops. Where do they thin the line to fill gaping gap in their defenses caused by the big lake draining.
What happens when they put a lot of troops and equipment and ammo on the open roads near the border?
This has been war gamed.
Russia either had intelligence that Ukraine planned an assault across the river, or just needed the troops defending the left bank elsewhere. For now, an amphibious operation is impossible. Russia filled the reservoir to a 19 year record level to ensure the islands in the Dnipro were impacted. Ukraine had troops on some of those islands. They also had troops on the left bank, and those troops are cut off. At least in the short term, there are military advantages to busting the dam, whether it was explosives or just over-filling the reservoir knowing the dam was already weakened. Normally with a weakened/damaged dam, you would LOWER the reservoir level and carefully manage it...