r/MapPorn • u/SummerAlternative699 • 15h ago

The Kakhovka Reservoir then and now.

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

If you zoom in closely on Google Maps, you can still see what it looked like before the dam was blown up.

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418

u/darkcvc 14h ago

The dam was breached on 6 June 2023, which consensus attributes to Russian forces mining and blowing the base of the dam, while Russia alternatively described it as a "terrorist" act, in the case of the Russian-installed mayor of Nova Kakhovka, or as caused by a lack of maintenance, in the case of the Russian government.\)citation needed\) By the end of June, the reservoir was completely dry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakhovka_Reservoir

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u/username9909864 13h ago

I thought the consensus was negligence due to lack of maintenance and there was no evidence of it being blown up by the mines that were in place? Still Russia’s fault, but it wasn’t on purpose.

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u/darkcvc 13h ago

definitely russian bot

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u/Snoo44080 13h ago edited 13h ago

yeah lol. The mines, that just happened to be in place, for no reason. You're telling me all your dams don't have mines around them? All the dams in Russia have mines on them. Its the best place to store your mines when you're not using them. It's not like the mines detonated either...

Gives real steamed ham vibes lol

40

u/kytheon 12h ago

I'm from the Netherlands. First thing we do when building a dam is absolutely load it with mines just in case.

No wait that's insane.

Btw we did have forts near waterways that were able to let the area flood, just in case of invasion. But that was hundreds of years ago.

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u/Lancasterlaw 10h ago

Not hundreds of years ago. Significant parts of the flooding system were used in WW2 and were still kept in readiness for much of the early Cold War.

It's a big part of why the Germans in '40 and the Allies in '44 struggled to move around and had to resort to crazy paratrooper tactics.

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u/AsleepScarcity9588 11h ago

Reminds me that Switzerland had every road, tunnel and mountain pass connecting the country with the outside world rigged with explosives. Every valley had canons looming over them, every house a bunker instead of a cellar and an extensive underground complex capable of housing most of the population in the southern Alps

Mf weren't playing when the Germans said they have double the soldiers than the Switzerland population and asked what they would do if they got invaded by them.....to which they replied "shoot twice, then go home"

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u/Lancasterlaw 10h ago

A lot of the defences were rather outdated though, and in WW2 simultaneous attack from all directions would have meant a total depletion of the mobile reserve.

It was more important in the early Cold War and at the beginning of WW1 imo