Financial Times: Rus­sia set off ‘envir­on­mental bomb’ by breach­ing dam, Zelenskyy claims

Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Rus­sia of det­on­at­ing a “bomb of mass envir­on­mental dam­age” after the Kak­hovka dam span­ning the Dnipro river in south­ern Ukraine was breached yes­ter­day, flood­ing swaths of ter­rit­ory and for­cing mass evac­u­ations.

Ukraine’s pres­id­ent blamed “Rus­sian ter­ror­ists” for the explo­sion, say­ing: “It was mined by the Rus­sian occu­pi­ers and blown up by them. Rus­sia det­on­ated a bomb of mass envir­on­mental dam­age. This is the biggest man-made envir­on­mental dis­aster in Europe in dec­ades.”

Jens Stol­ten­berg, Nato’s sec­ret­ary­gen­eral, called the dam’s destruc­tion “an out­rageous act” that showed “the bru­tal­ity of Rus­sia’s war in Ukraine”.

Vladi­mir Putin’s spokes­per­son, Dmitry Peskov, rejec­ted claims that Rus­sia was respons­ible for des­troy­ing the dam, with the Krem­lin accus­ing Kyiv of a “delib­er­ate act of sab­ot­age” to “deprive [Rus­sian-occu­pied] Crimea of water”.

The flood­ing is likely to com­plic­ate any Ukrain­ian plans for an assault on the area dur­ing its anti­cip­ated coun­ter­of­fens­ive against Putin’s inva­sion, since much of the land on the Rus­sian-con­trolled side of the Dnipro will be vir­tu­ally impass­able.

Water levels in the reser­voir were higher than usual at the time of the breach and river­side dis­tricts of the regional cap­ital Kher­son were swiftly flooded. Oleksandr Prok­u­dyn, gov­ernor of the Kher­son region, ordered the evac­u­ation of vil­lages along the Ukraine con­trolled west­ern bank of the Dnipro.

Zapor­izhzhia nuc­lear power plant relies on water flow from the reser­voir upstream of the dam to cool its react­ors. Mustafa Nayyem, head of Ukraine’s State Agency for Res­tor­a­tion, warned of poten­tially “cata­strophic con­sequences” but nuc­lear experts said there was no evid­ence that the plant’s safety had been com­prom­ised.

The Inter­na­tional Atomic Energy Agency said there was “no imme­di­ate nuc­lear safety risk at the plant” but it was mon­it­or­ing the situ­ation.

The dam and its hydro­elec­tric power sta­tion, built in 1956, con­sti­tuted one of Ukraine’s largest energy facil­it­ies, con­tain­ing about 18 cubic kilo­metres of water and provid­ing elec­tri­city to more than 3mn people.

Nayyem said the dam formed a cru­cial part of the coun­try’s energy infra­struc­ture and “its destruc­tion would have far-reach­ing con­sequences bey­ond the imme­di­ate area”.

“Rus­sian mil­it­ary forces may con­sider that the break­through of the dam could cover their retreat from the right bank of the Dnipro and pre­vent or delay Ukraine’s advance across the river,” he added.

Hen­rik Ölander-Hjalmarsson, a Swedish civil engin­eer who in Octo­ber mod­elled the wide­spread destruc­tion implied by a Kak­hovka dam breach, told the Fin­an­cial Times that the breach “looks much worse” because of the high water levels in the reser­voir. The scen­ario had sug­ges­ted a four to five-metre wave would hit Ant­onovsky bridge near Kher­son within the first day. Videos on social media showed water sur­ging through the dam from the reser­voir, which also sup­plies a canal that brings water to the Crimean pen­in­sula. Satel­lite images made by Maxar Tech­no­lo­gies showed dam­age to the dam’s sluice gates and a sec­tion of road.

Rus­sia cap­tured the entire Kher­son region, which is bisec­ted by the Dnipro, dur­ing the early weeks of Putin’s inva­sion last year, before retreat­ing across the river from the regional cap­ital last Novem­ber.

Ukraine and Rus­sia have routinely accused each other of shelling the dam, the hydro­elec­tric sta­tion and the nuc­lear power plant.