This is an obnoxious bait-and-switch. They make a false dichotomy out of “Either Russia did it or it was an accident” and then correctly disprove it being an accident while not establishing any particular reason beyond Russia also having the plans for the dam to establish it was Russia who did it in their own held territory and not Ukraine. It’s exactly as miserable a level of journalism as one has come to expect of the NYT.

Incidentally, here’s an article from a few months ago about the Ukrainian military’s contingency to blow up the dam and seemingly already inflicting a little bit of damage to test being able to destroy it more completely. Does this prove that Ukraine did it? Of course not, but there is a burden of proof to establishing one side probably did it and OP’s article does not even conceive of reaching that burden of proof in the case of Russia being the culprit.