Flood as key Kherson dam blown up
Blast puts nuke plant water supply at risk
Ukraine and Russia accused each other yesterday of blowing up a dam and causing widespread flooding in southern Ukraine, while Russia said it had thwarted another Ukrainian offensive in eastern Donetsk and inflicted heavy losses.
Russia launched a new wave of overnight air strikes on Kyiv and Ukraine said its air defence systems downed more than 20 cruise missiles on their approach to the city.
The South command of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said Russian forces blew up the Soviet-era Nova Kakhovka dam in occupied Kherson region.
Unverified videos on social media showed intense explosions around the dam and water surging through. The dam, 30 metres tall and 3.2km long, was built in 1956 on the Dnipro river.
It holds water equal to that in the Great Salt Lake in the US state of Utah and also supplies water to Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, and to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which is also under Russian control.
“The scale of the destruction, the speed and volumes of water, and the likely areas of inundation are being clarified,” the Ukrainian military said on Facebook.
Russian news agencies said the dam had been destroyed in shelling while the mayor of Russia-controlled Nova Kahhovka city was quoted as blaming an act of terrorism — Russian shorthand for an attack by Ukraine.
There was no “critical danger” to the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia facility — Europe’s largest nuclear plant — Russia’s TASS state agency cited a Moscow-backed official in the Zaporizhzhia region as saying.
The Russian installed head of the Kherson region said evacuation near the dam has begun and that water would reach critical levels within five hours.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports and it was unclear whether any of the latest fighting marked the beginning of Ukraine’s long-anticipated counter-offensive.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky will hold an emergency meeting over the Nova Kakhova dam blast in southern Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said on Twitter yesterday.
Ukrainian officials have made no mention of any broad, significant new campaign, although in his nightly address on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was enigmatic, hailing “the news we have been waiting for” and forward moves in Bakhmut in Donetsk.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine on Feb 24 last year in what the Kremlin expected to be a swift operation, but its forces suffered a series of defeats and regrouped in the country’s east.
Tens of thousands of Russian troops dug in over the winter, besieging Bakhmut for months and bracing for an expected Ukrainian counter-attack to try to cut Russia’s so-called land bridge to the Crimean Peninsula.
Russia says it thwarted a major Ukrainian attack in the Donetsk region over the weekend and yesterday the defence ministry said a fresh Ukrainian assault had also been repelled.
Russian forces inflicted huge personnel losses on attacking Ukrainian forces and destroyed 28 tanks, including eight Leopard main battle tanks and 109 armoured vehicles, it said. Total Ukrainian losses amounted to 1,500 troops.
“Having suffered heavy losses the day before, the Kiev regime reorganised the remnants of the 23rd and 31st mechanised brigades into separate consolidated units, which continued offensive operations,” it said.