Ukraine accuses Russia of blowing up dam, fears massive flooding

Ukraine on Tuesday accused Russia of blowing up a major dam in the Kherson region in southern Ukraine "in panic" to slow down the former's counteroffensive. While Russia, which controls Kherson, has blamed Ukrainian shelling for the destruction of the dam at the Kakhovka hydropower plant. The ruined dam has reportedly unleashed floodwaters that are estimated to reach critical levels in five hours.

• Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 over territorial disputes and to prevent the latter from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
• The see-sawing war saw Ukraine successfully launch several counteroffensive actions against Russia, forcing its troops to vacate many territories recently.
• Last month, Russia claimed to have captured the key Ukrainian city of Bakhmut while Kyiv denied it.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the Russian forces of committing an "ecocide" for destroying the dam and the hydroelectric power station, claiming that it poses an ecological risk. The floodwaters could inundate houses and streets downstream while depleting the water levels upstream used to cool Europe's largest nuclear power plant and affecting the drinking water supply to Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.

The Kakhovka dam supplies drinking water to the Crimean peninsula and to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Monitoring the situation, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the dam failure didn't pose any immediate safety risk to the nuclear plant. The Soviet-era dam was constructed in 1956 partly using concrete and earth.

Meanwhile, people were requested to prepare for evacuation as ten villages on the western bank of the Dnipro River and a part of Kherson city were at risk of flooding. Zelenskyy called an urgent meeting of Ukraine's national security and defense council as water levels reportedly rose by meters within hours. Russia seized the Kakhovka dam in the early stages of the war.