The failure of the Russian-controlled Nova Kakhovka dam in the Kherson region early on June 6 created a flood that swept through the war zone, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people, and likely affecting Ukraine's plans for an amphibious assault across the river, The Guardian reported.
According to the British newspaper, a famous Russian military blogger, under the pseudonym Rybar, said that 11 of the dam's 28 spans were destroyed after explosions at 2 a.m. on June 6 (local time). However, this detail could not be immediately verified.
The dam, which is 30 metres (98 feet) high and 3.2 kilometres (2 miles) long, was built in 1956 on the Dnipro River as part of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant. According to Reuters, Kakhovka includes a reservoir with a volume of 18 cubic kilometres – equivalent to the Great Salt Lake in Utah – that supplies water to the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, and to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky holds an emergency meeting with the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine following the Kakhovka dam collapse, June 6, 2023. Photo: The Guardian
The governor of the Ukrainian-appointed Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, said about 16,000 people were in the high-risk area on the Ukrainian-controlled right bank of the Dnipro River. People were being evacuated to districts upstream of the city of Kherson and would be taken by bus to the city and then by train to Mykolaiv, and on to other Ukrainian cities, including Khmelnytskyi, Odesa, Kropyvnytskyi and Kiev, Prokudin said.
The disaster occurred on the second day of the Ukrainian offensive, marking the beginning of a massive counteroffensive. And the dam collapse in Kherson is likely to affect the Ukrainian army's plans for an amphibious assault across the river.
“The goal is clear: to create impassable obstacles in the path of the Ukrainian army… to slow down the final stage of the war,” Mikhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, said on Twitter after the incident. “Over a large area, all life will be destroyed; many residential areas will be destroyed; huge damage will be done to the environment.”
Video footage verified by the New York Times shows a significant amount of water flowing freely through a section of the dam in Nova Kakhovka, Kherson region, on June 6, 2023, posing a threat to communities and infrastructure along the path of the overflowing floodwaters. Photo: NY Times
Meanwhile, the Russian-appointed mayor of Nova Kakhovka, Vladimir Leontyev, rejected Ukraine's accusations that Moscow was responsible for the dam collapse, describing the incident as a major "terrorist act" carried out by Kiev.
The Russian official said the extent of the damage to the Kakhovka hydroelectric plant was so severe that restoring it would be tantamount to rebuilding it from scratch.
“The extent of the damage is very serious. Now one cannot say that its restoration will be easy,” Leontyev told Solovyov Live TV on June 6, saying that the construction of the Kakhovka hydropower plant had taken place from 1950 to 1956, but now the reconstruction will take only 2023 to 2024.
In addition, the city administration headed by Mr. Leontyev also said on the Telegram channel on June 6 that there was no threat to the North Crimea Canal, which supplies water to the Crimean peninsula from the Kherson region, after the dam at the Kakhovka hydroelectric plant broke, and predicted that the water would recede in a few days.
Russian soldiers patrol an area at the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant on the Dnipro River, Kherson region, May 2022. Photo: Al Jazeera
Both Ukraine and Russia have previously accused each other of targeting the dam with attacks. Last October, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky predicted that Russia would destroy the dam to cause flooding.
Authorities, experts and residents have been anxiously monitoring the flow of water through the dam for months.
In February this year, water levels were so low that many feared for the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, whose cooling system is fed by water from the Kakhovka reservoir.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said there was no immediate nuclear safety risk at the plant due to the dam collapse on June 6, but added that it was monitoring the situation closely. The operator of the Zaporizhzhia plant, Enerhoatom, also said there was no immediate threat to the plant.
Ukraine controls five of the six dams along the Dnipro River, which runs from its northern border with Belarus down to the Black Sea and is vital to the country’s water and electricity supplies. The Kakhovka Dam – the furthest downstream from Kherson – is controlled by Russian forces .
Minh Duc (According to ABC Net News, The Guardian, TASS)
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