Who destroyed the dam in Ukraine? Kiev and Moscow accuse each other as some 80 cities are on the brink of flooding

Destruction of the dam of the upper part of the Kakhovka dam, located in Ukraine and occupied by Russia, has become yet another episode in the war of war narratives that is heading into its second year. The authorship of the attack on the region, which flooded several municipalities and is forcing the evacuation of thousands of people in the south of the country, is unknown, since Moscow It is Kiev accuse each other. According to the Ukrainian operator Ukrhydroenergo, the power plant linked to the Kakhovka dam is completely destroyed. “The plant cannot be restored, it is completely destroyed. The hydraulic structure is being dragged by the waters”, said the director of Ukrhydroenergo, Igor Syrota. The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, claims that “Russia is to blame” for the destruction. “The world must react. Russia is at war against life, against nature, against civilization,” he said in Telegram, before accusing Moscow of laying mines and blowing up the dam. “Russia exploded a bomb and caused great damage to the environment,” Zelensky said in a speech via videoconference to the “Bucharest Nine”, a forum that brings together nine countries from central and eastern Europe that are members of NATO. “It is the biggest environmental catastrophe caused by humans in Europe in decades,” added the head of state, referring to fears about the destruction of flora and fauna in this area of ​​southern Ukraine. According to the Ukrainian leader, “Russian terrorists caused the internal detonation of the structures of the New Kakhovka hydroelectric plant”. He also refuted the Russian accusations and asserted that it was “physically impossible to blow up (the dyke) in one way or another from the outside, with bombing”. The head of state of Ukraine ordered the evacuation of the areas most at risk of flooding, where about 80 cities are located. Zelensky also asked that it be possible to provide drinking water “to all cities and towns” that depended on the destroyed dam.

“We do everything we can to save people. All services, the army, the government, the president’s office are involved,” said Zelensky, who promised to take “a series of international and security measures so that Russia pays for its responsibilities” in what he described as a “terrorist attack “. For her part, the adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, Daria Zavirna, stated in her Telegram account that Russia “planned the explosion of the Kakhovka hydroelectric plant a long time ago”. Zarivna said Russian occupation authorities had raised the water level to the maximum to intensify the flooding resulting from the dam’s explosion. The Kremlin, for its part, denies that it was involved and claims that Kiev is to blame for the destruction, and said that there was an act of “deliberate sabotage” and said that one of Ukraine’s goals is to “deprive the region of water”. Crimea, peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014 and connected to the reservoir through a canal. “We categorically deny these allegations. This is deliberate sabotage, planned and organized by order of the Kiev regime,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at his daily telephone press conference. He vehemently refuted accusations by Ukrainian authorities, who blamed the attack on Moscow. At the same time, Peskov redirected a question to the Russian Ministry of Defense about the impact of what happened on the Russian war campaign. This is because the hydroelectric dam is of great importance not only for its energy capabilities, but also because it connects the right and left banks of the Dnieper River, which has become the front line between the Russian and Ukrainian armies. According to Peskov, one of the objectives of the attack was to leave the Crimean peninsula without water, which, however, has enough reserves in its reservoirs for the moment.

What happened?

Around 2:50 am (8:50 pm on Monday in Brasilia), the Kakhovka dam was attacked and destroyed, causing an avalanche of water that threatens about 80 cities that are at risk of being flooded. Authorities imposed by Russia have declared a state of emergency in this Ukrainian city. Built in the 1950s, during the Soviet period, the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam makes it possible to send water to the North Crimean canal, which starts in southern Ukraine and crosses the entire Crimean peninsula. According to Peskov, “the act of sabotage can have very serious consequences for tens of thousands of inhabitants of the region”. The plant is under Russian control and located on the Dnieper River, whose eastern bank is under occupation by Moscow forces, while on the other side of the infrastructure begins the territory under Ukrainian control. About 900 people were evacuated from the flooded areas of the Russian-held city of New Kakhovka after the upper structure of a dam broke and partially flooded the area, Russian-imposed authorities in the region said. “In Nova Kakhovka, the floods reached the administrative headquarters and the water level continues to rise. So far, around 900 people have been evacuated,” said a representative of the city’s emergency services, quoted by the Russian news agency “Interfax”.

According to the latest data from the emergency services, the water level rose by 12 meters in Nova Kakhovka, 11.2 meters in the town of Dnipriani and 7.3 meters in Korsunka. Dnipriani and Korsunka – the latter completely submerged – are located downstream. The rupture of the dam, produced according to Russia by an attack with multiple launchers of Ukrainian Alder missiles and according to Kiev by an explosion caused inside the hydroelectric plant, affects 14 cities where 22 thousand people live, according to the president of the government imposed by Moscow in Kherson region, Andrei Alekseenko. The Kakhovka hydroelectric plant, the fifth largest in Ukraine, has a capacity of 334.8 megawatts. Its reservoir, built in the 1950s, held 18 million cubic meters of water before Tuesday’s disaster.

*With information from international agencies