The Latest Breaking News from Ukraine

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.

Russia and Ukraine blamed each other for the explosion.

Water is now gushing downriver, civilian houses are becoming submerged and the government has issued dire warnings of ecological disaster in Ukraine

A senior Ukrainian diplomat called Russia a terrorist state at the top UN court, as hearings began in the case over the downing of a Malaysian Airlines

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

The Kremlin on Tuesday accused Kyiv of sabotaging the Kakhovka hydro-electric dam in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine to cut off a key source of water for Crimea and distract attention from a "faltering" counter-offensive against Russian forces.

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.