Meanwhile, on the same day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also announced that he would take the case to the International Criminal Court (ICC). On his Telegram channel, he added that the dam collapse had left hundreds of thousands of people without access to clean water.

The Kakhovka hydroelectric dam on the Dnipro River in Kherson collapsed on June 6. Both Russia and Ukraine blamed each other for the dam collapse.

Image of the broken Kakhovka dam. Photo: Reuters

The Kakhovka Dam, 30m high and 3.2km long, was built in 1956. With a reservoir capacity of 18km3 , it is an important water supply for the Crimean peninsula in the south and Europe's largest nuclear power plant in the north, Zaporizhzhia. The dam's collapse flooded many downstream communities and exacerbated Ukraine's power shortages.

According to the latest data from the emergency services, about 2,700 houses in 15 settlements in Kherson region have been flooded so far. In total, about 22,000 people live here. Nearly 1,300 people have been evacuated. Local authorities have deployed 40 temporary shelters with a capacity of up to 5,500 people. A state of emergency has also been declared in the entire Kherson region, instead of just the city of Nova Kakhovka as previously announced.

Meanwhile, Nova Kakhovka Mayor Vladimir Leontyev said that about 100 people were trapped and thousands of wild animals had died after the dam collapsed. He also warned of the risk of pollution due to flooding. According to Mayor Leontyev, authorities are trying to rescue those trapped by the floods.

Ukraine's agriculture ministry said tens of thousands of hectares of farmland were at risk of flooding after the Kakhovka dam collapsed, while at least 500,000 hectares of land were left without irrigation and fields in the south could turn into desert next year. The ministry said the failure would cut off water supplies to 31 irrigation systems in Kherson, Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia. In 2021, these systems supplied 584,000 hectares of farmland, which produced about 4 million tonnes of grain and oilseeds.

THANH SON (synthesis)