Dam Destruction in Kakhovka – Who is Responsible ? Russia Ukraine Exchange Blames – USA not Confirmed

Kakhovka: Monitoring Desk (www.abc.net.au) Floodwaters from a collapsed dam have continued to rise in southern Ukraine, forcing hundreds of people to flee their homes in a major emergency operation that brought a dramatic new dimension to the war with Russia. Amid the disaster response, artillery shelling rang out as people scrambled to get out of the danger zone, climbing onto military trucks or rafts.

The flood’s force was expected to slacken throughout Wednesday (local time), but water levels were expected to rise by another metre over the next 20 hours and engulf more downriver areas along the banks of the Dnipro.

Some local residents spent Tuesday night on rooftops.

Others, scrambling to flee the rising waters, were evacuated by buses and trains with the belongings they could carry.

“The intensity of floods is slightly decreasing,” said Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of Kherson Regional Military administration.

“However, due to the significant destruction of the dam, the water will keep coming.”

He said more than 1,800 houses were flooded along the Dnipro and that almost 1,500 people had been evacuated.

Residents sloshed through knee-deep waters in inundated homes as videos posted on social media showed scenes including rescue workers carrying people to safety, and what looked like the triangular roof of an entire building that had been uprooted drifting downstream.

Footage taken from the air showed waters filling the streets of the Russian-controlled city of Nova Kakhovka on the eastern side of the river.

Nova Kakhovka’s Russia-appointed mayor, Vladimir Leontyev, said seven people were missing but early signs indicated that they could be alive.

Officials in Russia-controlled parts of Kherson region said 900 Nova Kakhovka residents had been evacuated, including 17 rescued from the tops of flooded buildings.

The destruction of the Moscow-controlled Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River flooded a large part of the frontline in the Kherson region.

Ukraine and Russia have blamed each other for the dam collapse.

About 42,000 people were at risk from flooding in Russian and Ukrainian controlled areas along the Dnipro River, said Ukrainian officials, as the United Nations aid chief warned of “grave and far-reaching consequences”.

Ukrainian officials said that some 80 communities in the overall Kherson region were at risk of flooding.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has described the bursting of the Kakhovka dam as “an environmental bomb of mass destruction” and said only liberating the entire country can guarantee protection against new “terrorist” acts.

Ukraine said Russia had committed a deliberate war crime by blowing up the Soviet-era Nova Kakhovka dam, which powered a hydro-electric station.

The Kremlin has accused Ukraine of sabotaging the dam to cut off a key source of water for Crimea and distract attention from a “faltering” counteroffensive against Russian forces.

Some Russian-installed officials said the dam collapsed on its own, while Washington said it was uncertain who was responsible.

But deputy US ambassador to the United Nations Robert Wood told reporters it would not make sense for Ukraine to destroy the dam.

Neither side offered immediate public evidence of who was to blame. The Geneva Conventions ban targeting dams in war because of the danger to civilians.

“Such deliberate destruction by the Russian occupiers and other structures of the hydro-electric power station is an environmental bomb of mass destruction,” Mr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.

With water levels still rising, officials and analysts have begun to count the human and environmental costs for one of the world’s most fertile agricultural countries, saying settlements, thousands of people and some rare wildlife species are at risk.

At least 150 tonnes of oil from the dam have leaked into the Dnipro, Ukrainian Environment Minister Ruslan Strilets told a press briefing, and the environmental damage has been estimated at 50 million euros ($80 million).

A meteorologist measuring the river level at the scene said the water was 3.5 metres higher than on Monday, before the dam was destroyed.

The dam’s collapse occurred just as Ukraine was poised to launch a counteroffensive and it could complicate the advance of its forces in any assault, analysts said.

However, Kyiv has not revealed in which direction it plans to strike.

‘Why would Ukraine do this?’

The United States said on Tuesday it was “not certain” who was to blame for the destruction of the dam, but it would not make sense for Ukraine to do this to its own people and territory.

The 15-member UN Security Council met on Tuesday at the request of both Russia and Ukraine after the dam breach sent a torrent of water gushing through southern Ukraine.

When asked ahead of the council meeting if the United States knew who was responsible, Mr Wood told reporters: “We’re not certain at all. We hope to have more information in the coming days.”

“But, I mean, come on … why would Ukraine do this to its own territory and people — flood its land, force tens of thousands of people to leave their homes? It doesn’t make sense,” Mr Wood said.

UN secretary-general António Guterres said earlier on Tuesday that the world body did not have any independent information on how the dam burst, but described it as “another devastating consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine”.

Many Security Council members also asserted during Tuesday’s meeting that the crisis would not have occurred if Russia had not invaded neighbouring Ukraine in February last year.

Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia blamed Ukraine without providing evidence, accusing it of trying to create “favourable opportunities” for it to regroup its military units to continue a counteroffensive.

“The deliberate sabotage undertaken by Kyiv against a critical infrastructure facility is extremely dangerous and can essentially be classified as a war crime or an act of terrorism,” Mr Nebenzia told the council.

Ukraine’s UN ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya accused Russia of a “terrorist act against Ukrainian critical infrastructure”, without providing evidence.

“It is physically impossible to blow it up somehow from the outside by shelling,” Mr Kyslytsya said.

“It was mined by the Russian occupiers and they blew it up.”

UN aid chief Martin Griffiths told the Security Council “the sheer magnitude of the catastrophe will only become fully realised in the coming days”.

“But it’s already clear that it will have grave and far-reaching consequences for thousands of people in southern Ukraine on both sides of the front line through the loss of homes, food, safe water and livelihoods,” he added.

“The reservoir, which is formed by the dam, is a lifeline in the region and a critical water source for millions of people.

“At least 40 settlements are already flooded or partially flooded in Kherson Oblast, and this number is expected to rise.”

No immediate nuclear safety risk

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has enough water to cool its reactors for “several months” from a pond located above the reservoir of the major Soviet-era dam, the UN atomic watchdog said on Tuesday, calling for the pond to be spared.

The dam’s reservoir provided water used for the essential cooling of the six reactors at Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant as well as of spent fuel and emergency diesel generators that have had to be used repeatedly when external power has failed.

“There are a number of alternative sources of water. A main one is the large cooling pond next to the site that by design is kept above the height of the reservoir,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said in a statement issued in response to the breach of the Kakhovka dam.

The IAEA said the pond was full and had enough water for “several months” since the plant’s six reactors were currently shut down.

“It is therefore vital that this cooling pond remains intact,” Mr Grossi said.

“Nothing must be done to potentially undermine its integrity. I call on all sides to ensure nothing is done to undermine that.