Following some of the threads, there's satellite evidence it may have just failed for mechanical reasons. If this was unintentional and they didn't abandon those positions downstream they're in for a bad time.
The fact it's timed with the first day of the counter offensive and it's been long discussed as a very likely target for Russia that would be one hell of a coincidence.
Regardless of what actually happened today, the high level was absolutely deliberate, it is just basic dam maintenance to let more water out when it fills. And that was absolutely reckless, contributing to certain deaths today.
Of course, if you are planning on blowing the dam, that makes sense for maximum damage, but I speculate.
Maybe forcing a mechanical failure provides more plausible deniability than simply blowing it up? It also makes it easier to repair considering it's still a valuable source of water for Crimea.
A hydrologist on twitter said that it would require far fewer explosives to blow it up when overfilled. If they were short on those, it would be another reason.
Easier to repair? Did you see the pictures? Not an engineer, but that looks like they will have to tear down whatever is still standing and rebuild from scratch.
It's been shelled for months probably by all parties at some point
> Ukraine's Armed Forces (UAF) "developed a tactic to work around that limitation by conducting multiple precision strikes across the key Antonivskiy Bridge and the road that ran atop the Kakhovka Dam in such a way as to break the roadways in a line across them, rendering them unusable without actually destroying the bridges' infrastructure (or badly damaging the dam)," the think tank said.
Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages.
The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort. He held off.
