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.
.......
Ukrainian forces in the area were trying to push southward to bisect the Russian-occupied territory west of the Dnieper and get within artillery range of the Nova Kakhovka dam.
Washington Post, Dezember 29, 2022; https://web.archive.org/web/20221231095500/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/29/ukraine-offensive-kharkiv-kherson-donetsk/
In ein paar Monaten gibt es dann wieder die Erkenntnis das Westliche Geheimdienste schon vorher informiert waren.