The Latest Breaking News on War in Ukraine

Combined impact of Covid crisis, Ukraine war and tough measures by central banks taking heavy toll

The dramatic rupture of the dam that upheld Ukraine’s largest reservoir released a torrent of water, raising fears of widespread damage and flooding in areas where tens of thousands of people live

Russian occupation authorities ordered residents of three districts to leave their homes on Tuesday after the huge Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine was breached in the early hours, but some locals said they would stay despite the rising waters.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russian forces on Tuesday of blowing up the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station after mining the facility, and said Moscow must be held to account for a "terrorist attack".

Russia and Ukraine blamed each other for the explosion.

The destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River that separates Russian and Ukrainian forces in southern Ukraine has sent a torrent of water gushing through the breached facility, creating a new humanitarian disaster at the heart of the war zone and stoking fears of a nuclear escalation.

Ukraine has accused Russian forces of blowing up a major dam and hydroelectric power station

The Soviet-era dam, which is 30 metres tall and 3.2 km long, was seized by Russian forces on the first day of the invasion last year

Widespread flooding is expected across swaths of southeastern Ukraine after a large dam was destroyed.

Ukraine called on Tuesday for an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss what it called a "Russian terrorist attack" on the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine.

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.