Dam supplying water to Crimea blown up in southern Ukraine
World
Drone footage showed water surging through the remains of the dam with some damaged structure
KYIV (Reuters) – A major Soviet-era dam in the Russian-controlled part of southern Ukraine was breached on Tuesday (June 6), unleashing floodwaters across the war zone in what both Ukraine and Russia said was an intentional attack by the other's forces.
Drone footage published on Tuesday showed water surging through the remains of the dam with some damaged structures. Reuters was able to locate the drone video showing the Nova Kakhovka dam matching building signage, road layout and structures around the dam as seen on file and satellite images. Reuters was not able to confirm when the video was filmed.
The video has also been shared by the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The dam, 30 meters (yards) tall and 3.2 km (2 miles) long and which holds water equal to the Great Salt Lake in the US state of Utah, was built in 1956 on the Dnipro river as part of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant.
It also supplies water to the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, and to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which is also under Russian control and which gets cooling water from the reservoir.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said there was no immediate nuclear safety risk at the plant due to the dam failure but that it was monitoring the situation closely. The head of the plant also said there was no current threat to the station.
"The scale of the destruction, the speed and volumes of water, and the likely areas of inundation are being clarified," the Ukrainian military said on Facebook.
Russian news agencies said the dam had been destroyed in shelling while the mayor of Russia-controlled Nova Kahhovka city was quoted as blaming an act of terrorism - Russian shorthand for an attack by Ukraine.
There was no "critical danger" to the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia facility - Europe's largest nuclear plant - Russia's TASS state agency cited a Moscow-backed official in the Zaporizhzhia region as saying.
The Russian installed head of the Kherson region said evacuation near the dam has begun and that water would reach critical levels within five hours.
President Zelenskiy will hold an emergency meeting over the Nova Kakhova dam blast in southern Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council, said on Twitter on Tuesday.
