The Managed Withdrawal Eliminates The Thing DC And Kiev Were Hanging Their Hats On...,

You can’t understand military operations at any level without also understanding basic geography — especially the height of terrain features (hence the universal tactical imperative to “hold the high ground”).

The entire managed withdrawal (retreat) conversation has missed the crucial fact that the west bank of the Dnieper River is much higher than the east bank — thus there is no possibility of flooding the west side of the river. Any high water would inundate the flood plain to the east, which would cause the heavy artillery stationed there to displace and would disrupt fire support to the forces holding west of the river — not to mention also causing havoc with the supply lines leading up to the choke points of the bridges and ferries crossing the Dnieper, many of which would be damaged/washed away if the British managed to break the big Kakhovskaya dam with one of their underwater drones.

That is the problem that General Surovikin is pre-empting by his managed withdrawal from the east bank of the Dnieper now vs the chaos of a forced retreat after the SHTF from a massive dam break. The only inundation of the west bank that I can see occurs where the river just north of Kherson flows into the Dnieper, and it's relatively minor.

The article begins with the statement:
“A worst case modelling for a Russian demolition of the Nova Kakhovka Dnipro river dam show that the worst flooding will take place on the left (south east) side of the river bank.”  The animated map of the projected flooding is quite interesting, especially regarding the big backflow up the Bug River.  It shows that the majority of the water would inundate the east ban.   The right (west bank) of the river is generally higher than the east bank all the way north to Kiev. An old chestnut about WW II is that “if the Todt organization had begun fortifying the west bank of the Dnieper in 1942, the Germans would still be defending that line today….”

With Russian forces on the right bank Ukraine has good reason to combine destroying the dam with an offensive or just destroying it. Since Russia doesn’t really have the manpower applied to the conflict to do big pushes towards Nikolaev and Odessa the point of occupying the right bank at the moment is pride. And a temptation to dam busting. Ukraine might still blow up the dam, but it won’t create a huge blow to crimea and a military catastrophe along the river. The withdrawal also eliminates the legal reason for destroying the dam (it’s not legally prohibited when it serves a military purpose).

And in a weird way it eliminates the thing Kiev and DC we’re hanging their hats on. Sure, it can be said that Russia ran away but that’s a short news item. A defeat in the field was necessary; large losses, surrender, chaos. It’s not a short war anymore so it cannot be prosecuted like one. And the last thing the US needs or wants is an actual long war (funding a long insurgency is different). The Ukrainian state isn’t Russia’s problem and it’s a very big and growing problem.