Attacking with US-made precision-guided rockets and domestically produced kamikaze drones, Ukraine on Saturday and Sunday, pounded and breached a dam in Russia’s western Belgorod region, flooding countryside and inundating logistic routes used by Kremlin border troops.

At least six long-range rockets fired from inside Ukraine struck the Belgorod Reservoir Dam during the daylight hours on Saturday to damage the dam’s road surface, a sluice gate, and technical buildings. Local social media recorded at least two direct hits.

The Soviet-era dam on the south-flowing Siverskyi Donets River holds a reservoir of about 76 million cubic meters (about 30,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools) of water that is the main source of water for the Russian city of Belgorod and its suburbs, home to some 420,000 people.

Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, in a statement, said that three US-made GMLRS rockets fired from HIMARS multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS) hit the dam near the village of Grafovka, injuring two people and damaging the structure. The dam’s overall integrity remained intact and there was no catastrophic breach, he said.

Flooding of border areas was “possible” and about 1,000 people potentially in the path of water, should the dam fail, would be evacuated by authorities, Gladkov said.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFE) operate two launch systems, the wheel-based HIMARS launcher and the track-based M270 launcher, that are capable of launching the US-made GMLRS (Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System), a precision-guided munition usually armed with a 23-kilogram (51-pound) high-explosive warhead.

Grafovka and the dam are a straight distance of some 13 kilometers (8 miles) from Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and within easy range of a GMLRS strike.

Early on Sunday morning, Ukrainian artillery crews and elite Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) operators launched a second wave of attacks targeting the dam, using more precision-guided missiles and propeller-driven kamikaze drones.

The Russian Defense Ministry, in a Sunday statement, said its air defense units intercepted and destroyed 34 Ukrainian “missiles” and drones aimed at the dam, and that no damaging hits were scored.

Geo-located video and still images reaching the public domain via Belgorod-based social media showed a 4-meter-wide (13-foot-wide) breach in the dam with water pouring through a ruined sluice gate, holed and cratered roadway atop the dam, and wrecked technical buildings.

Video of two drones slowly boring in on the dam and detonating in powerful explosions recorded energetic small arms fire that seemed not to interfere with the robot aircraft as they dove in.

A statement published by Gladkov’s office on Sunday said that authorities had the situation under control and that water downstream from the dam had been released intentionally, to relieve pressure on the structure.

Robert Brovdi, the Ukrainian USF commander, in a Sunday statement, credited the USF’s 1st Separate Center, a crack drone unit specializing in long-range strikes against Russian infrastructure and military targets since late 2022, for the aircraft component of the attack. The strike’s main objective was to flood out Russian combat units operating on the border near Grafovka and Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, Brovdi said, in comments trolling Gladkov directly.

“Get some gondolas, some gondolas! The Belgorod reservoir was breached today!” Brovdi wrote in part. “I hear that the military [rude word for Russian soldiers] are uncomfortable in their trenches by the village of Grafovka. [And] the local civilians are rejoicing: ‘We don’t have trenches any more, we have canals!”

Independent Russian news channels reported limited flooding of fields and vegetable plots near Grafovka village and rising water levels in the Siverskyi Donets between the villages of Bezlyudovka and Novaya Tavolzhaknka. In June 2023, all three villages saw combat, civilian population evacuation, and property damage following a Ukrainian cross-border raid.

Limited flooding was reported in downstream villages. By morning, controlled water releases began to mitigate risks, and partial flooding affected over 10 private garden plots, though no homes were reported underwater.