I just watched a video of the dam that blew, as well as satellite photos.
Although I’ve heard this nowhere, it is obvious what happened.
The Russians had heavily mined the waters above the dam to stop the Ukrainians from crossing.
The water levels in the lake were the highest ever. For some reason the Russians were not opening the gates allowing the water levels to be stable.
They finally opened the gates and the high water level combined with the increased current when they finally opened the gates caused the mines from the lake to break loose and drift into the dam, exploding and destroying the dam.
In the video I watched after the dam had blown, there were a series on continuous underwater explosions at the dam as additional mines continued to drift into the dam and explode.
It was Russian stupidity that blew up the dam!
Haven’t heard that scenario but seems plausible.
Washing away their forces, cutting of Crimea,
And ultimately increasing the area that Ukraine can attack
Master strategists
Close, but the Russian had heavily mined **inside** the dam and the power plant last year. They likely also placed more heavy explosive charges as well and wired the lot to a switch of some sort.
It takes tons of explosives to blow a dam, a single mine will not blow it. A bomb in the water will just displace water, doing nothing to the dam. The explosives have to be placed inside the dam to work.
The Russians did not open the gates because they wanted to build up the water pressure on the dam to an extreme, so that when it blew, complete destruction was ensured.
As for the detonation - some heroic Russian clicked a switch to blow the mines or heavy explosives - water pressure set off any remaining mines that had not detonated - those are the explosions in the after-detonation images.
It is instructive to point out here that not only the dam was blown, but the entire hydroelectric power plant - you can see in one image smoke coming from inside what remains.
It might be possible that the Russians tried to release a lot of water to hamper Ukrainian crossings, but then a magnetic mine got sucked into an intake, and did not detonate until it was inside near metal components, causing unintended secondary detonation of the main charges that the Russians had emplaced inside.
I do not propose that they be given the benefit of the doubt. Russia planted the charges, the mines, and manipulated the water levels and flows. They must be held accountable. Otherwise, there is no deterrent against them blowing the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZPNN).
It seems more likely to have been a deliberate demolition by the Russian chain of command, in which case they are all the more likely to continue that scorched earth strategy with ZPNN, as they are forced to withdraw.
There is a video of bridge across the dam getting blow up from November. AFAIK there no video has been released of what destroyed the dam. Russia definitely has the video from the security cameras, they aren’t releasing it.