The car bomb itself would not have been enough to bring down the dam.
The thing was blown up from within. It’s a bit weird that other options are discussed than the Russian forces or commandos blowing it up. Maybe they didn’t intend the scale of the damage, but they quite certainly blew it up. Everything else is just smoke and mirrors.
The article addresses that.
A Ukrainian special forces communications official, who also noted the car appeared to be rigged, said he believed the purpose of that was twofold: to stop any Ukrainian advance on the dam and to amplify the planned explosion originating in the machine room and destroy the top of the dam.
The car bomb itself would not have been enough to bring down the dam. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to preserve operational secrecy.
ETA: Perhaps the people in control of the car bomb envisaged two different scenarios for using it.
Either:
(a) if Ukrainian soldiers storm the dam, blow up the car on its own to stop them reaching the other side
or:
(b) if the order is given to detonate the explosives inside the dam, blow up the car simultaneously
I have no idea what this phrase (the first five words of the article) is meant to convey…
Four year this coming fall,
…but this is a great initiative, given Putin’s clear intent to wipe out Ukrainian culture.
Plus Erdogan seems to very much be of the mindset that “…personally I welcome our new Russian overlords”.
NATO really needs some formal sanctions for members who act against its interests. But, yeah, their strategic position and large military would be a problem outside of NATO.
This feels like something trump would have loved to have done in the face of criticism.
New images from ESA’s Sentinel-2 showing the Kakhovka reservoir mostly drained two weeks after the destruction of the dam, leaving a web of rivulets and an expanse of stagnant pools and wet silt:
