Video Shows Ukraine's Kakhovka Dam Blown Up, Unleashing Flood of Water

Floodwaters have been unleashed across a war zone in southern Ukraine after blasts at a Soviet-era dam.

Videos on social media showed explosions around the Kakhovka dam in the Moscow-controlled Kherson region.

The unverified clips displayed the shock from bystanders as water surged through the remains of the dam built in 1956, which is 90 feet high, two miles long and holds a quantity of water equal to Utah's Great Salt Lake.

The dam was built on the Dnipro River as part of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant and also supplies water to Russia-annexed Crimea and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which is also under Moscow's control.

Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the Kherson military regional administration, said there had been flooding in at least eight settlements as authorities brace for further inundations across the region. He said that evacuations are under way and that the flooding had put at risk at least 16,000 people.

Ukraine's military said that Russian forces had blown up the dam while Russian sources blamed Ukraine, Reuters reported.

Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky tweeted he had convened a meeting of his National Security and Defense Council as he blamed "Russian terrorists" for the attacks on the dam. He said the incident "confirms for the whole world that they must be expelled from every corner of Ukrainian land."

However, Vladimir Leontyev, the Russian-installed mayor of the occupied settlement of Nova Kakhovka near the damaged dam blamed Ukraine for the incident, which he said followed "successive strikes" by Ukrainian troops, Russian state news agency Tass reported.

Ukrainian hydro power company Ukrhydroenergo said in a statement that the hydroelectric power plant's engine room "has been destroyed completely" and that the plant "cannot be restored."

According to a preliminary forecast, the Kakhovka reservoir is expected to be operational within four days, it added.

"An uncontrolled decrease in the reservoir level is an additional threat to the temporarily occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant," Ukrhydroenergo said, noting that water from the reservoir is needed for the nuclear power plant's turbine capacitors and safety systems.

Russian-installed officials said there was no danger yet to the nuclear plant, which is Europe's largest.

Mark Nelson, founder of the Radiant Energy Fund and an adviser on nuclear energy, told Newsweek that there was no immediate danger to the nuclear power plant.

"Any drawdown of the cooling ponds would take place extremely slowly, over a matter of months," he said. "This gives a massive amount of time to restore the situation to stable."

Update 06/06/23, 4:15 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with further information, including comment from Mark Nelson.