The destruction of the Kakhovka dam is not the first time that the Kremlin decided to blast an important piece of infrastructure to impede the opponent’s advance. A similar fate befell the dam in Dnipro (then Dniepropetrovsk) in late August 1941.

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Russia predictably now claims that the Kakhovka dam has been destroyed due to a Ukrainian attack. But Russians packed the dam full of explosives months ago, and Ukraine raised alarm about it.

The initial Russian reporting on what happened included denying that any explosion had occurred at all, followed by several contradictory narratives floating around simultaneously, until, the expected Kyiv blaming started suggesting that the dam was destroyed deliberately but the Russians did not realize the scale of the damage they wrought.

Those parroting the Kremlin talking points immediately pointed out, that the destruction of the dam will result in Crimea losing its water supply. And after all, why would Russia willingly cut off the supply of water to Crimea if one of the reasons for launching the full-scale invasion was to unblock the supply of water flowing into the peninsula through the North Crimea Canal?

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Such people, whether out of ignorance or willfully, ignore the fact that Crimea is within the internationally recognized border of Ukraine and Kyiv is dead set on reclaiming it. A deliberate destruction of the dam does not benefit Ukraine, either in the short or in the long term, in the least.

Russian invaders are facing an imminent Ukrainian counteroffensive. The destruction of the dam might impede Ukrainian operations below the dam and serves as an added headache for Kyiv, now forced to deal with evacuating civilians.

The destruction of the dam by the Kremlin makes much more sense, not only because Russians have more to benefit from it, but also because, unlike Kyiv, Moscow does not care about civilian casualties.

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It definitely does not care about Ukrainian civilians. As evidenced by the fact that Kherson began to be shelled by Russians immediately upon their withdrawal, it does not care about the people that live in areas that, according to the result of the “referendums” it conducted last year, are now Russians. Failure to react adequately to incursions by Russian partisans proves that Putin does not even care about Russian people living in Russian territory, which should not be surprising considering that mobilized men are sent into the Ukrainian meatgrinder with outdated equipment and with little to no training.

But first and foremost, the Kremlin does not care about people living in Ukraine. And it is not the first time it has shown so. Not only during this war. Not only when Stalin implemented his campaign of engineered starvation, the Holodomor.

When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, the German forces rapidly advanced deep into the European parts of the Soviet Union. Hitler’s columns occupied large swathes of Belarus and Ukraine, as well as the recently annexed Baltic States.

In a desperate attempt to halt the invaders, on August 29, 1941, the Soviets deliberately destroyed the Dnieprostroi dam in Dniepropetrovsk (modern-day Dnipro) as part of their scorched earth policy and in an attempt to cause flooding that would hamper further German advances.

The destruction of the dam, which was a massive and costly engineering project that was the pride of the Soviet empire was touted as a great sacrifice and proof of the Soviet people’s determined resistance against fascism.

“We blew up the Dnieper dam so as not to allow this first child of the Soviet five-year Plan to fall into the hands of Hitler’s bandits. All measures were taken so as not to permit the Germans to make use of the dam and machinery,” said Solomon Lozovsky, the spokesman for the Kremlin at the time.

“The Observer”, a British Sunday newspaper further reported in its next issue that “The Soviet spokesman. Mr Lozovsky, announcing its destruction, said that not only the government but all Soviet citizens were determined to conduct the war in such a manner that German strength should grow weaker daily, contrary to what had happened in the west, where every new occupation had added to the German war potential.

‘Here the Germans will not get raw materials, food, or machinery,’ he said. Crops were destroyed or harvested and hidden, and much of the farm machinery was taken away.”

What was not so loudly spoken about was that the flooding caused the deaths of between 20,000 and perhaps even more than 100,000 Ukrainians, Soviet citizens, who lived downriver from the dam. Although even that could perhaps be twisted into a narrative about sacrifice.

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In this war, Ukraine has resorted to a similar move by opening a dam on the Irpin River, which may have helped stop the Russian advance on Kyiv early in the war. The difference is that decision did not result in the deaths of Ukrainians. And seeing how the Russians behave in the occupied territories, it possibly saved millions.

By contrast, the destruction of the dam in Dniepropetrovsk in 1941 did little to stop the Germans from further advancing and causing millions of deaths (in no small part due to how Stalin waged the war) but it did cause additional and pointless deaths of Soviet citizens who lives mattered little to the Kremlin.

But at least back in 1941, the despot in the Kremlin had the courage to make the decision to destroy the dam and present it as a determined action of a nation defending itself from Nazi invasion.

Today, the Kremlin also claims to be fighting “Nazis” in Ukraine. Why then, is the Kremlin not willing to claim the destruction of the dam as a necessary step taken in a fight against the “Nazi regime in Kyiv”?

Because in spite of the propaganda the Kremlin continues to spout, it knows very well that there is no Nazi regime in Kyiv.

Putin, his spokesman Peskov, FM Lavrov, Defense Minister Shoigu, all realize (and they also understand that everyone in the world knows it full well) that the only regime present in Ukraine is represented by the Russian invasion forces.