On Tuesday, a significant dam on southern Ukraine’s Dnipro River was destroyed, leading to groundwater cascading through the breach, flooding a war-torn area downstream. The event placed tens of thousands of residents at risk and increased the possibility of long-term environmental and humanitarian disasters.
Ukraine and Russia promptly accused each other of being accountable for the calamity. Kyiv officials claimed that Moscow’s forces had blown up the Russian-controlled dam in the predawn hours while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pointed the finger at “Russian terrorists.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry S. Peskov denied any Russian involvement and described the destruction as “sabotage.”
It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric power plant’s rupture near the city of Nova Kakhovka, but some top European officials denounced Russia. Engineering and munitions experts believe that a deliberate explosion within the dam most likely caused its collapse. Structural failure or an outside attack on the structure is possible but less likely to have occurred.
The dam’s destruction is a “monumental humanitarian, economic, and ecological catastrophe,” and “yet another example of the horrific price of war on people,” according to António Guterres, the United Nations’ secretary-general.
The dam, located in the Kherson region, had held back a body of water the size of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Ukrhydroenergo’s head, Ihor Syrota, said in an interview that it had collapsed after an explosion occurred around 2:50 a.m. on Tuesday.
