A gaping hole punched in Ukraine's Nova Kakhovka dam that unleashed a wall of floodwater means that the canal which has traditionally met most of Crimea's water needs is receiving drastically less water, the Kremlin warned on Tuesday.
Russia and Ukraine have blamed each other for the breach at the Russian-controlled dam, a human and ecological disaster which coincided with intensified efforts by Kyiv to retake territory seized by Russian forces.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov alleged on Tuesday that one aim of what he cast as a Ukrainian attack was to deprive Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, of fresh water. Kyiv, which wants to retake Crimea, says Russia was behind the breach. Neither offered immediate evidence proving who was to blame.
Unverified video on social media showed water surging through what was left of the dam which straddles the Dnipro River and is part of a complex that includes a vast reservoir which holds a volume of water - 18 cubic kilometres - roughly equal to the Great Salt Lake in the U.S. state of Utah.
The reservoir feeds the Soviet-era North Crimean Canal - a channel which has traditionally supplied 85% of Crimea's water. Most of that water is used for agriculture, some for industry, and around one fifth for drinking water and other public needs.
Peskov said the breach looked like a calculated Ukrainian attempt to choke off water supplies to the peninsula.
"Clearly one of the aims of this act of sabotage was to deprive Crimea of water - the water level in the reservoir is dropping and, accordingly, the water supply to the canal is being drastically reduced," he said.
The water level in the reservoir, which averages 8.4 metres in depth, was dropping by 35 cm every hour, Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed official, said on Tuesday afternoon.
Russia had taken measures to alleviate Crimea's water supply problems before access to the canal was restored last year, said Peskov, meaning there was a certain "margin of safety".
Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-backed head of Crimea, said there was no immediate threat to water supply or any risk of flooding, but flagged a potentially serious threat ahead.
"There is a risk that the North Crimean Canal will get more shallow," he said, an event that could reduce water supplies in time.
For now though, Aksyonov said that Crimea's reservoirs were filled to about 80% capacity and the canal currently held around 40 million cubic metres of water.
"There is more than enough drinking water. Efforts are under way to minimise water losses in the canal," he said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.
WATER GEOPOLITICS
The canal was blocked by Ukraine after Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, something which led to acute water shortages on the peninsula that ended only after Russian forces seized the canal when they invaded on Feb. 24 last year.
Russian officials cited restoring access to it as one of the advantages of what Moscow calls its "special military operation" in Ukraine.
Before the war, Russian President Vladimir Putin held frequent meetings on Crimea's water problems, trying to devise plans - from drilling wells to building desalination plants - that would allow the peninsula to become fully autonomous when it came to water.
Mikhail Razvozhaev, the Russian-installed governor of the Crimean city of Sevastopol, the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, played down any immediate threat to water supplies, saying water reserves were "at a maximum".
In the southern Crimean village of Pervomaiske, three out of four people interviewed by Reuters said they did not expect big problems.
Farmer Yevgeny Alyoshin said he did not depend on the water level of the canal and could draw water from three boreholes to fill ponds whose water he used to irrigate grape vines.
Yelena Yasinskaya, who grows her own fruit and vegetables, said irrigation ponds dried out in the summer and forecast serious watering problems.
In November last year - when both Moscow and Kyiv accused each other of plotting to blow up the dam - Vladimir Konstantinov, a top Russian-backed official in Crimea, said the peninsula had enough water in its own reservoirs when they were full to last two years even if it didn't rain.
He said however that the Russian-backed authorities were relying on the canal as "a source for Crimea's development".
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn;Editing by William Maclean and Nick Macfie)
