Engineers explain damage to Russian dam hit by Ukraine

It is not the first time that dams have become victims in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which started in February 2022.

In 2023, the Russian military attacked the Nova Kakhovka dam, releasing 18M m3 of water, which flooded a wide area of Ukraine in the Kherson region, towards Crimea, forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of civilians and causing widespread ecological damage, with Ukraine president Zelensky calling the attack “an environmental bomb of mass destruction”.

Three years later, on Monday 27 October 2025, BBC News reported that on the previous Saturday, Belgorod’s governor Vyacheslav Gladkov had announced on the messaging app Telegram that a dam in his region had been struck by a Ukrainian drone.

Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert Brovdi confirmed that a drone strike carried out by his forces caused the water level to drop by around one metre, according to BBC News.

Asset identified as Grafovka Dam in Belgorod Oblast

HR Wallingford technical director, flood and water management Craig Goff told NCE that the affected infrastructure appears to be Grafovka Dam, in Belgorod Oblast, Russia.

“It is only ~12km north of the border with Ukraine and the flow direction is into Ukraine,” he said. “The river valley downstream does not pass through any major Russian settlements, just passing to the sides of some small villages. The attack does not appear to be aimed at devastation downstream.”

University of Sheffield School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering, Blast and Impact Group research fellow Andrew Barr told NCE: “The dam at the Belgorod Reservoir appears to be constructed primarily of an earth-filled embankment, with a short concrete spillway section at the centre connecting the reservoir to the Donets River.

“Water flow through the dam is controlled by two radial arm spillway gates, and videos of the dam show significant damage to at least one of these gates and their control buildings, which form the most vulnerable part of the structure.”

Catastrophic damage does not appear to have occurred – engineer

Goff added: “The dam looks to be a fairly standard, not particularly high, earth embankment dam with a central twin radial-gated spillway section. The drone strike appears to have damaged the edge of this spillway structure, probably dislodging one of the gates and allowing water to pass through the section designed for flood passage anyway.

“The reports that the water level in the reservoir has only dropped by about 1m suggests that a catastrophic dam breach has not occurred yet, but rather the water is slowly draining out.

“Whether this worsens depends on what damage was done to the earth embankment to the side of the concrete spillway structure. If water is flowing through the soil-concrete interface it could erode away and unravel, releasing more water rapidly.”

Assessing the impact of the damage, Barr said: “Due to the large capacity of the reservoir, the resulting uncontrolled discharge of water through the damaged spillway will continue to worsen flooding of the area downstream of the dam until a repair is made.”

Barr also assessed the feasibility of a repair, saying: “A temporary upstream structure to slow the flow could potentially be in place within a few days, but a complete repair of the spillway gates and their control systems will take much longer, and could potentially be complicated further if the attack also resulted in damage to the concrete spillway itself.”

Engineer raises questions about military objective of strike

Goff said he couldn’t identify what the military objective of the strike was, given the lack of known and obvious targets in the area which could be affected by the failure of the dam.

“I’m not sure what the military objective of this action is. It doesn’t look like it is a hydropower dam from the Google Earth images I can see, and there is no mention of a hydropower facility at this site that I can find,” he said.

“There doesn’t seem to be an obvious permanent target downstream that a breach flood would impact. Maybe there are Russian troops in the area below at present. There is a road across the crest so maybe it was an attempt to disrupt troop movements or supply lines across this road,” though Goff also pointed out that the deliberate “targeting of dam infrastructure as an act of war is prohibited by the Geneva Convention.”

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