Rescuers were yesterday battling to save thousands of Ukrainians including people stranded in attics and on rooftops in flood-hit Kherson.
One ingenious drone operator dropped off a badly needed bottle of water from an unmanned craft to a boy stranded with his family.
At least 20 people have died since Tuesday’s bombing of the Nova Kakhovka dam, which Kyiv says the Kremlin orchestrated.
In Oleshky, on the Russian side of the flooded Dnipro River, locals said that Moscow’s forces have been blocking their evacuation efforts.
Volunteer Yaroslav Vasiliev said: “They are taking away the boats. They are afraid of saboteurs, they suspect everyone.”
A local named Yektarina was awaiting rescue with three elderly people in an attic.
She said: “We are afraid that no one will know about our deaths.
“Everything around us is flooded. There is still no help.”
Viktoria Mironova-Baka, who is based in Germany, said that she has been in touch with trapped relatives. She said: “They said Russian soldiers were coming by boat but would only take those with Russian passports.”
Oleshky’s Ukrainian mayor, Yevhen Ryshchuk, said that corpses are now floating to the surface. There are fears they are from cemeteries.
Ukraine ’s SBU security service claims that it intercepted a Moscow soldier on the phone admitting: “They [Ukraine] didn’t blow it up. That was our sabotage group.”
Ukraine troops are thought to have gained a mile of territory close to the embattled eastern city of Bakhmut.
And President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday gave his first apparent acknowledgement of a counter-offensive in the south.
He said in a video message: “I am in constant communication with the commanders of Khortytsia, Tavria, all the hottest areas. It is not time to talk about it yet.”
