Is Putin planning a “scorched earth” withdrawal from occupied Ukraine?

Ukraine has accused Russian forces of blowing up the major dam and hydroelectric power station at Kakhova, threatening a “catastrophic” flood that could displace hundreds of thousands of people and which threatens a nuclear disaster by cutting off cooling to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.

One worker at the plant recently warned Sky News  of the consequences of just such an event: “The level of radioactive pollution, and most importantly the area of contamination, will be thousands of square kilometres of land and sea… it would be much, much worse than Fukushima and worse than Chernobyl.”

Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration, has confirmed that mass evacuations are underway: “The evacuation of residents from dangerous areas has begun. All services are working. The emergency services, police officers, the military are all nearby. Please take documents and essential items and wait for the evacuation buses.”

He stated that some 16,000 people on the right bank of Kherson are in the critical zone and that as of 7:30 a.m., nine settlements had been fully or partially flooded.

Ukrainian nuclear energy corporation, Energoatom, has stated that the situation at the plant was “under control,” and the International Atomic Energy Agency said its experts at the site were monitoring the situation and there was no immediate threat.

As it becomes apparent that the long-awaited Ukrainian counter offensive has begun there are fears that Putin may fall back on the tactics espoused by his role modal Josef Stalin, who in June 1941, in a radio address to the nation said:

An explosion at the destroyed Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plan.

“In case of forced retreat… all rolling stock must be evacuated, the enemy must not be left a single engine, a single railway truck, not a single pound of grain or gallon of fuel. Collective farmers must drive off all their cattle and turn over their grain to the safe keeping of the state authorities, for transportation to the rear. Valuable property that cannot be withdrawn, must be destroyed without fail.

“In areas occupied by the enemy, partisan units, mounted and on foot, must be formed; sabotage groups must be organized to combat enemy units, to foment partisan warfare everywhere, blow up bridges and roads, damage telephone and telegraph lines, set fire to forests, stores and transport. In occupied regions conditions must be made unbearable for the enemy.”