The Rossiya 1 TV channel aired an interview with a man who was introduced as a commander from the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station and who was the last to leave the station when the building had already begun to go under water. His version of events contradicts both Russian and Ukrainian official versions, the Agency draws attention . In his story, the commander did not mention either artillery shelling or explosions before the dam burst. According to him, its destruction began from the shutter closest to the engine room.
“First, one shutter broke through, the closest one to us, which, accordingly, was already damaged. And then the third, fourth, fifth. Everything went step by step…. And literally in fifteen or twenty minutes the building cracked. The back wall, which is closer to the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, collapsed,” he said.
According to the Russian version, the hydroelectric dam collapsed after a series of artillery strikes from the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, the man did not mention the arrivals before the destruction, nor any explosions (earlier, adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Mykhailo Podolyak said that, according to Ukrainian intelligence, a motorized rifle brigade of the Russian army carried out the explosion).
It also follows from the words of the commander that the sluice gates closest to the engine room were the first to collapse, where part of the road had collapsed the day before:
Earlier, OSINT researchers suggested that the destruction of the dam began before its breakthrough on June 6 and the cause of the disaster was the damage received earlier and the improper operation of the hydroelectric power station by the Russian administration.
However, on June 8, it was reported that Norwegian scientists recorded seismic shocks, confirming that the destruction of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station was the result of an explosion. Researchers at the Norwegian Institute NORSAR analyzed data from regional seismic stations and found clear signals on Tuesday, June 6, at 2:54 local time time. The time and place coincided with media reports about the collapse of the Kakhovka dam. Signals indicate that an explosion has occurred. The magnitude of the seismic shocks caused by the explosion fluctuates between 1 and 2.
A day later, it became known that American spy satellites also recorded an explosion at the dam shortly before its collapse, but American analysts still do not know who is responsible for the destruction of the dam and how exactly this happened.