An ecological disaster and a military setback. Located on the front line separating Russian and Ukrainian forces, the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station dam, located in southern Ukraine, was partly destroyed by several explosions on the night of Monday June 5 to Tuesday June 6, causing major flooding as far as the city of Kherson, at the mouth of the Dnieper River. An action whose ecological impact could be disastrous, but which should also complicate the expected counter-offensive of the Ukrainian forces, prevented from crossing the river to attack the Russians from the west.
If the circumstances of the incident still remained unclear Tuesday morning, the Ukrainian authorities accused Moscow of having sabotaged the work. “Russia has destroyed the Kakhovka dam, causing probably the biggest technological disaster in Europe for decades and endangering thousands of civilians”denounced, on Twitter, the Minister of Ukrainian Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba. “The destruction of civilian infrastructure is clearly a war crime, and we will hold Russia and its affiliated entities to account”, added the President of the European Council, Charles Michel. Charges refuted by Moscow, which blamed a Ukrainian terrorist attack.
At dawn, the Ukrainian authorities invited the inhabitants located near the banks to evacuate the area to take shelter from the rising waters. At least 16,000 people are affected, Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson region military administration, said on social media. Electricity and gas were cut in several districts and images posted on social media on Tuesday morning showed several villages already partially flooded. President Volodymyr Zelensky called an emergency meeting of his security council to decide on measures to protect the population.
In Zaporijia, “no immediate risk”
For their part, Russian local authorities played down the consequences of the partial destruction of the Kakhovka structure, saying that no major town was threatened with flooding. “According to the emergency services, the water has risen (…) at a level of between 2 and 4 meters, which does not threaten large localities” located downstream of the dam, said on Telegram Andrei Alekseïenko, head of the government of the Kherson region, installed by Russia. Experts believe, however, that the left bank of the Dnieper, in territory under Russian control, should be the most affected by the rising waters.
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