Water returns to Kakhovka reservoir: how it will affect combat operations

Even after the Russians blew up the hydroelectric power station, the Kakhovka reservoir remains a very difficult area to pass through from a military point of view.

This is evidenced by public Sentinel imagery from the European Space Agency, cited by Defense Express.

In general, the Dnipro River has already returned to its historical course, and the entire area resembles what is depicted on historical maps – Velykyi Luh.

Obviously, due to natural processes with snow melting, large areas have gone under water again. This means that when the water comes back up, it will be very weak soils, where any equipment, including amphibious vehicles, will not be able to get through.

Thus, despite the fact that the Kakhovka reservoir has been drained, the area itself – Velykyi Luh – is the least suitable for any progress. It is a combination of the Dnipro riverbed itself, floodplains, marshy and flooded areas.

And this is the natural state of Velykyi Luh – the minimum water level in September and October, and with the beginning of spring and floods and until mid-summer, it turns into an almost continuous water space, experts write.

As Mind wrote, water has started to return to the Kakhovka reservoir again. Satellite imagery shows that a significant part of the previously dried up area of the former reservoir has been submerged again. However, the full restoration of the reservoir is still a long way off, as the dam of the hydroelectric power station is still destroyed.

According to expert Hryhoriy Kolomiytsev, the reason for the partial filling of the reservoir is the spring snowmelt. According to him, today we can observe the natural process of flooding the river floodplain in the absence of artificial water level regulation. Such spring floods had been occurring on these lands for thousands of years before the hydroelectric power station was built here.