Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff says he ‘does not understand’ how there are any doubts that Russian forces blew up the dam. In a statement, Andriy Yermak said: “At 2.50am, Russian troops blew up the Kakhovka hydroelectric station and its dam. I do not understand how there can be any doubt about this. Both constructions are located in the temporary Russian-occupied territories. Neither shelling nor any other external influence was capable of destroying the structures. The explosion came from within.”
The Kremlin accuses Ukraine of deliberately sabotaging the dam. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, told reporters: “We can state unequivocally that we are talking about deliberate sabotage by the Ukrainian side.” He said [Russian president] Vladimir Putin had been briefed on the situation.
The US “cannot say conclusively” who was responsible. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters at the White House: “We’re doing the best we can to assess”, noting “destruction of civilian infrastructure is not allowed by the laws of war”. Earlier Tuesday, NBC News reported that the US government had intelligence indicating Russia was behind the incident, according to two US officials and one western official.
The Ukrainian government called for people living downstream to evacuate in the face of catastrophic flooding. Energy company Ukrahydroenergo said the hydroelectric power plant at the dam had been blown up from the inside and was irreparable.
The governor of the Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, said about 16,000 people were in the “critical zone” on the Ukrainian-controlled right bank of the river.
The areas most under threat of flooding are the islands along the course of the Dnipro downstream of Nova Kakhovka and much of the Russian-held left bank in southern Kherson. Andrey Alekseyenko, one of the Russian-installed officials in occupied Kherson, has posted to Telegram to say that up to 22,000 people are in the flood plains in Russian-controlled territory.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry called for an urgent meeting of UN security council to discuss what it called a Russian “terrorist act against Ukrainian critical infrastructure”.
There seems to be no immediate safety threat to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant from the collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam 200km downstream, according to Ukrainian and UN experts. Water from the reservoir affected by the destruction of the dam is used to supply the plant’s cooling systems.
The British foreign secretary, James Cleverly, who is in Ukraine, blamed the destruction on Russia’s invasion. “I’ve heard reports of the explosion on the dam and the risk of flooding. It’s too early to make any kind of meaningful assessment of the details,” he said.
