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Notes -
Most likely Russians wanted to blow it up later, but somebody fucked up and blew it up earlier than expected, and most of the Russian troops weren't informed about the original blow up plans either (this is very common among Russians - they are regularly blowing themselves up on minefields that some other regiment made and forgot to notify the appropriate channels or the central command messed up the updates and the troops in the area didn't get the current maps of the same area. Military communications in Russian army are shit). Some sources - of course, no way to verify it so far - claim they even know who it was that was sent at that night to verify and complete the final rigging before the troops withdraw orderly and then in several days, when Ukrainian forces start to take over, the explosion happens and drowns them. But those people screwed up the job and caused the rigging (which was there since last December) to go off prematurely, when nobody wanted it. Thus also Russians initially claimed there's absolutely nothing happening - because that's what they were told is going to happen at that day, absolutely nothing.
That'd be unnecessary. Russia has a war crime list that would take a library to contain at this point. Adding one more to the list just for the sake of "making Russia look bad" is completely unnecessary - it already looks as bad as it could in the eyes of those who cares, and in the eyes of those who doesn't they'd parrot whatever lie Russia wheels out anyway (and the lie of course would be "they did it, not us" - it's the obvious move). There's absolutely no possible gain here.
There's no single "moment" - the river is big, the front line is long, and troops have been crossing here and there for a while. Likely, the idea was to blow it up when the first defense line of Russians on the left side is overwhelmed (that'd happen in days probably) and they fall back to the second line, and Ukrainians come in to take control, and position themselves perfectly to be flooded and to have a humanitarian catastrophe on their hands slowing down their advance (unlike Russians, Ukrainians can't just say "to hell with the population"). The exact time when it happens would likely be determined somewhere up there, as usually in Russia, and nobody really would know when until the last moment. It didn't work that way - instead, Russians were flooded themselves, and nobody is caring for the population in Russian-controlled flooded areas because Russia is just shooting at anybody who shows up there, because why not. It's a proper mess now.
Always have been. Reading about Barbarossa was eye-opening. The Germans identified where the border between two armies was, punctured the front line there, penetrating deeply into the rear, there was little to no coordination between the Soviet units on either side, so they had to fall back to hastily reform the frontline a few hundred km in the rear. At least the Soviet command learned their lesson and this never happ... nah, the Germans did it a dozen more times, routing the Soviet forces every time, until their supply lines finally gave out a few km away from Moscow.
Wait, so they got HoI4’d in real time?
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