The “employees have been redeployed to safe places”, announced the Russian administration, which accuses kyiv of bombing the city.
SourceAFP
© OLGA MALTSEVA / AFP
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LRussian authorities announced on Tuesday that they had withdrawn from the town of Nova Kakhovka, accusing kyiv forces of bombarding this town located in southern Ukraine near a strategic hydroelectric dam. “Nova Kakhovka public administration employees, state and municipal institutions also left the city and redeployed to safe places,” the Moscow-installed administration said. It does not indicate, however, whether the Russian army remains deployed in the city or whether it also withdraws.
This city is located on the left bank of the Dnieper, in the region of Kherson, where the Russian forces had withdrawn last week because they could not hold the right bank. After the November 11 Russian withdrawal from the right bank, “Nova Kakhovka came under direct fire from heavy artillery and mortars of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” the occupation administration said. “Life in the city has become dangerous,” she added to justify her departure, saying that “thousands” of residents had also left the city.
Destroyed infrastructure
This city is located near the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, taken by the Russians at the start of their offensive against Ukraine in late February and of great importance for supplying water to the Crimean peninsula, located further south and annexed by Moscow in 2014. Built in 1956, during the Soviet period, this hydroelectric dam allows water to be sent into the North Crimean Canal, which starts in southern Ukraine and crosses the entire Crimean peninsula.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow forces of having “undermined” the dam and power plant units, adding that if the structure exploded, “more than 80 localities” would be flooded. According to kyiv, a destruction of this infrastructure would also have an impact on the water supply of all of southern Ukraine and could affect the cooling of the reactors of the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia, the largest in Europe, which draws its water in the dam’s 18 million cubic meter artificial lake. The Russian occupation authorities have denied any mining of the Kakhovka dam, stressing that its destruction would hamper Crimea’s water supply. According to the head of the Russian occupation in Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, the work “no longer produces electricity today because there is no need for it”.