Zelenskiy steps up criticism of International Red Cross over inaction at Kakhovka dam

Volunteers with the Ukrainian Red Cross evacuate a woman from the floods in Kherson. The ICRC, the international body, has been denounced by Ukrainian leaders for its slowness in acting. Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

Volodymyr Zelenskiy – well schooled in chiding the west for being slow in providing help – has shifted his line of criticism from the pace at which arms has been reaching his country to the slow international response to the humanitarian and ecological disaster caused by the breach of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam.

Before visiting the flood-affected areas on Thursday, he used his nightly address to say: “Large-scale efforts are needed. We need international organisations, such as the International Committee on Red Cross, to immediately join the rescue operation and help the people in the occupied part of Kherson region. Each person that dies there is a verdict on the existing international architecture and international organisations that have forgotten how to save lives. If there is no international organisation in the area of this disaster now, it means it does not exist at all and that it is incapable of functioning.”