When the Levee Breaks: Five Military Takeaways from the Kakhovka Dam’s Destruction

Jun 8, 2023 | Timothy Heck and Zachary Griffiths
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The destruction of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River has launched a wave of recriminations as both the Ukrainian and Russian governments blamed each other for the breach. An estimated forty thousand people downriver face potential evacuation, while widespread flooding and large swathes of farmland left with irrigation puts agricultural production in jeopardy. It is, in the words of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the equivalent of “an environmental bomb of mass destruction.” It has direct ramifications for the war in Ukraine, quite literally changing the shape of the battlefield. But the military implications extend beyond that conflict zone and the two sides engaged in the war.

In the US military, the Army traditionally sees flooding as a National Guard concern, specifically the mission of supporting flood relief and recovery operations. However, as Walker Mills recently wrote for the Irregular Warfare Institute’s Project Maritime, “The river has again become a focal point for the ongoing war in Ukraine.” The article describes how rivers have served as maneuver space for Ukrainian forces. Because the dam’s destruction changes the very landscape the war is fought on, it should remind commanders and planners that brown-water and riverine capabilities that can coordinate with land and special operations forces are essential for conducting war. Just days removed from the dam’s destruction, five takeaways stand out.