Civilians spend the night on rooftops awaiting rescue after dam destruction in Ukraine; seven people are missing

Ukrainian teams and Russian units continue to rescue thousands of civilians from the flooded areas after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, which supplies the Crimeaattached by Russia in 2014, and is located in the direction of the Ukrainian troops who aim to reconquer the occupied territories. Responsibility is still unknown. Russia and Ukraine they continue to accuse each other, but it was not possible to identify the culprit. Some independent experts say the dam may have collapsed due to past damage and intense pressure on it. The authorities fear a humanitarian and ecological catastrophe. According to TASS, the Russian information agency, seven people are missing. The city of Kherson, under Ukrainian control since November, 70 km from the dam, had its streets flooded. It was estimated that the peak of the floods would happen on Wednesday, 7. Hundreds of Ukrainians had to spend the night and dawn on high areas, such as roofs and trees to escape the floods. According to prosecutor Andrii Kostin, more than 17,000 civilians had to be evacuated from the flooded areas. “More than 40,000 people could be in flooded areas. Unfortunately, more than 25,000 civilians are in Russian-controlled territory,” he said on Twitter. A high-ranking official installed by the Russians in the part of the Kherson region (southern) under their control announced the withdrawal of about 900 people from the occupied areas near the Dnieper River. According to the United Nations, more than 16,000 people have already lost their homes and efforts are underway to provide clean water, money and legal and emotional support to those affected. They also reported that 42,000 people are at risk due to flooding. The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyreported that thousands of people have not yet been evacuated from the region and are without access to water.

Ukraine has said that the attack on the dam, which Russia took over in the early days of the war – in February last year – was an attempt by Moscow to stop the expected Kiev offensive, which the government says will not be affected. Zelensky said the Russians had detonated an “environmental bomb of mass destruction”. More than 150 tons of motor oil have spilled into the river and thousands of hectares of arable land will be flooded, according to Kiev. “Fish losses have already been recorded in the region,” warned the Ukrainian Ministry of Agriculture, which also cited a future shortage of water for irrigation with the emptying of the Kakhovka reservoir. Russia, for its part, accused Ukraine of “deliberate sabotage”. For the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Denys Shmyhal, Russia caused “one of the worst catastrophes to the environment in recent decades”. Ukraine’s Western allies have also criticized the attack, which endangers civilian lives in an already war-torn region. The US government said the explosion may have caused several deaths. However, despite the catastrophe, Russian and Ukrainian officials reported that there were no fatalities.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the attack “another devastating consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine”. China, Russia’s crucial ally, expressed concern about the explosion’s “human, economic and environmental impact”. Oleksander Prokudin, military commander for the Kherson region, said the “water will still rise by one meter in the next 20 hours”. The partial destruction of the dam, built in the 1950s, raises fears of consequences for the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is 150 km away, because the Kakhovka hydroelectric plant guarantees cooling water for the site. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stressed, however, that “there is no immediate danger” and added that experts are monitoring the situation. Like the dam, the nuclear power plant is in an area occupied by Russian forces. The flooding of the Dnieper River, which has the right bank under the control of Ukrainian forces and the left bank under Moscow’s control, will submerge the Russian defense lines. But it will affect, in particular, Ukrainian forces and their eventual military operation in the region, as part of a counter-offensive to recover territories in the south and east of the country.

*With international agencies