Erdogan proposes investigation
Putin: Dam breach is “Ukraine’s barbaric act”
06/07/2023, 5:25 p.m
President Putin has spoken for the first time since the explosion of the dam in Cherson. In a phone call with his Turkish counterpart, Erdogan, he blamed Ukraine. The floods are an “ecological and humanitarian catastrophe on a large scale”.
In a telephone conversation with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed Kiev for the dam collapse. The news agency TASS quoted the president as saying from a statement by the Kremlin that it was a “barbaric act by Ukraine”. According to Putin, the dam collapse is a catastrophe for both people and the environment.
At the suggestion of the West, Kiev would further aggravate the situation and use terrorist methods, Putin is said to have said to Erdogan. Ukraine is “taking a dangerous bet on escalation of hostilities”, committing war crimes and organizing sabotage on Russian territory.
After the phone call, Erdogan proposed an investigative commission. He addressed this in separate phone calls with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Presidential Office in Ankara said. Such a commission could be staffed with experts from the two warring parties as well as with representatives from Turkey and the United Nations and thus have a similar format to the so-called grain agreement, it said. In July 2022, the United Nations and Turkey brokered an agreement that ended Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian grain.
Zelenskyj wrote on Twitter that he had spoken to Erdogan about the humanitarian and ecological consequences of the “Russian act of terrorism” and had given Turkey a list of urgently needed items.
Moscow officially annexed the Kherson Oblast in the fall and designates the region as Russian territory. The dam in the city of Nowa Kakhovka was destroyed on Tuesday night in the Russian-occupied part of the southern Ukrainian region of Cherson. Ukraine and many Western observers are convinced that the Russian occupiers blew up the dam themselves – possibly in order to hinder the planned Ukrainian counter-offensive. The Kremlin, in turn, blamed Kyiv. Russia has been waging a war of aggression against the neighboring country for more than 15 months.