Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the collapse of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine an act of “mass environmental destruction” and said the attack on the critical infrastructure would not change Ukraine’s plans to recover the territory from -occupied by Russian forces.
Describing the explosion that destroyed the dam as a deliberate and chaotic act by Russia, Zelenskyy said on Tuesday that the dam was blown up in a bid to “use the flood as a weapon” to deter Ukrainian forces.
In his nightly address to the nation, Zelenskyy said Moscow had resigned itself to losing control of Russian-annexed Crimea and, therefore, destroyed the region’s water supply.
“The fact that Russia deliberately destroyed the Kakhovka reservoir, which is very important, in particular, for providing water to Crimea, shows that the Russian invaders have already realized that they also have to flee Crimea,” he said.
“We will drain all our land,” Zelenskyy said, adding that blowing up the dam would not prevent a Russian defeat but would increase the costs of post-war reparations that Moscow would have to pay to Ukraine one day.
The Kremlin blamed Ukraine for the dam’s collapse on Tuesday, saying Kyiv destroyed the site to distract from a slowing launch of a counter-offensive that has already been blunted by Moscow.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said his forces had repelled the first three days of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in battles that left thousands of Ukrainian soldiers dead or wounded. The decision to destroy the dam was to slow down the attack by Russian forces, he said.
Neither Moscow nor Kyiv have provided evidence for their claims about the dam’s destruction.
The dam collapse presents a new humanitarian disaster in the heart of a war zone and as Ukraine prepares for a long-awaited counter-offensive.
‘Severe and far-reaching consequences’
Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford, reporting from the dam’s reservoir in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, says that before it was destroyed, the dam provided electricity and drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine. .
“The locals we spoke to here said… that the water level has now dropped anywhere between one meter and two meters, and we expect in the coming hours and days that the level will continue to go down and on that basis, one can only. Imagine the kind of devastating effect that will have on the affected areas south of the dam,” said Stratford.
Ihor Syrota, head of Ukraine’s hydroelectric power authority, told the US-funded Donbas Realii radio station that the flooding had caused the water to rise 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) and that Ukrainian officials believed that the flood waters will rise on Wednesday, then the level will rise. begin to fall within three to four days.
Flooding has already submerged villages and towns around the city of Kherson and Russian officials have warned that the main canal that supplies water to the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula is receiving significantly less water.
Ukrainian authorities say 17,000 people have been evacuated from Ukrainian-held territory and a total of 24 villages have been flooded.
“More than 40,000 people are at risk of flooding,” Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said, adding that another 25,000 people had to be evacuated from the most critical danger areas on the Russian-occupied side of the Dnipro River. .
Vladimir Leontyev, the Moscow-installed mayor of Nova Kakhovka where the dam is located, said the city was under water and hundreds of people had been evacuated.
The United Nations says at least 16,000 people have already lost their homes and that efforts are being made to provide clean water, money, and legal and emotional support to those affected. People on the Ukrainian-controlled side of the river were evacuated by ferry to cities including Mykolaiv and Odesa in the west.
UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths told the Security Council on Tuesday that the full “magnitude of the disaster” will be fully realized in the coming days.
The damage caused by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in #Ukraine means that life will be more difficult for those already suffering from the conflict.
Our immediate humanitarian task is to continue to help them survive, be safe and have a future.
What I said to #UNSC:
— Martin Griffiths (@UNReliefChief) June 6, 2023
“But it is clear that this will have serious and far-reaching consequences for thousands of people in southern Ukraine – on both sides of the front line – through the loss of homes, food, safe water and livelihoods,” said Griffiths.
Russia and Ukraine exchanged blame for the disaster at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Tuesday.
James Bays, Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor reporting from UN headquarters in New York, said the Russian and Ukrainian ambassadors at the council meeting gave “completely different accounts of what happened ” in the dam.
The Russian ambassador made the point that there had been past threats to the dam in Ukraine, Bays said, and Ukraine made the point that the dam was in territory controlled by Russian forces and that only mining the dam would destroy it. , not an attack from a distance.
“Those are the clear positions on both sides and what you need is someone to properly investigate which of these two different stories is true. I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon. soon,” said Bays, noting that the dam remains a military front line.
Ukraine’s interior minister said on Tuesday that Russia had attacked areas where people were being evacuated from the dam’s floodwaters and that two police officers had been wounded.
Ben Barry, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said flooding from the dam would benefit Moscow in the short term.
“Remembering that Russia is on the strategic defensive and Ukraine is on the strategic offensive, in the short term it’s an advantage for Russia, for sure,” Barry said.
“This will help the Russians until the water recedes because it makes it difficult for Ukraine to attack the river crossings,” he said.
The floodwaters inundating the region will also prevent the use of heavy weapons such as tanks for at least a month, said Maciej Matysiak, a security expert at the Stratpoints Foundation and ex-deputy chief of counter- Polish military intelligence.
“(It) creates a very good defensive position for the Russians anticipating offensive activity in Ukraine,” Matysiak said.
