Shortly after two in the morning, residents of Nova Kakhovka woke up to loud explosions, then strange rushing sounds.
“I’ve never heard of anything like it,” one wrote on a social media group. “It’s water, but why is it so audible? asked another.
The reason became clear at dawn on the swirling Dnipro river that cuts Ukraine in the middle: the hydroelectric dam of one of Europe’s largest reservoirs had exploded.
It was the unleashing of a new kind of terror for Ukrainians after 16 months of atrocities – and the consequences of what most likely appears to have been an attempt by Vladimir Putin to sabotage a long-awaited counter-offensive could be catastrophic.
I stood on the banks of the Kakhovka Reservoir above the destroyed dam, looking at a body of water so vast that in places the opposite bank cannot be seen. No wonder locals often call it a sea.
This Soviet-era reservoir holds about 18 km3 of water. It is more than twice the size of Loch Ness – Britain’s largest inland waterway – which holds more water than all the lakes in England and Wales combined along its 23 miles.
The reason became clear at dawn on the swirling Dnipro river that cuts Ukraine in the middle: the hydroelectric dam of one of Europe’s largest reservoirs had exploded.
This Soviet-era reservoir holds about 18 km3 of water. It’s more than twice the size of Loch Ness – Britain’s largest inland waterway – which holds more water than all the lakes in England and Wales combined along its 23 miles.
And its waters have been filled to record levels. The attack threatens at least 80 Ukrainian settlements – including the city of Kherson, liberated from Russia in November – while sabotaging the power supply of three million people and the cooling systems of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
Fortunately, experts said the factory in Zaporizhzhia, currently occupied by the Russians, presented no immediate danger. Five of the six reactors have been closed since last year while the sixth depends on water from a pond.
Yet thousands of lives have already been devastated by the breach – as evidenced by heartbreaking images of weary refugees clutching whatever possessions they could save as coffee-colored water levels rose around their homes. And the ecological damage could last for decades.
An aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the dam explosion “ecocide”. At least 150 tons of oil were washed into the deluge, while mines laid by both sides during the war were sucked from the shores by the gushing torrent. Many have been blown up – but others will end up untouched in fields, gardens, streets and beaches downstream.
A top Ukrainian scientist has predicted that around 100 km2 of land will be flooded, with flora and fauna in one of Europe’s most fertile regions suffering long-term damage from contamination by silt and salt. ‘water. The blame-the-breach game started immediately yesterday. Kyiv and Moscow have accused each other and launched investigations into the attack on the 100ft-high dam, which was completed in 1956 and feeds a crucial network of canals carrying water to Crimea.
The attack threatens at least 80 Ukrainian settlements – including the city of Kherson, liberated from Russia in November – while sabotaging the power supply of three million people and the cooling systems of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
The House of Culture in a flooded street in Nova Kakhovka after the nearby dam broke
UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, calling the blasts a ‘heinous act’, suggested they were a war crime – not least because they took place a day after the start of a long-awaited Ukrainian counter-offensive.
Last night Rishi Sunak said if the breach was intentional it would ‘represent the biggest attack on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine since the start of the war’. “The attacks on civilian infrastructure are appalling and reprehensible,” he said.
A defense minister in Kyiv said on Monday that Ukraine had made progress around Bakhmut in the eastern region of Donbass. There have also been at least two cross-border incursions by anti-Putin Russian forces.
Yet the attack on the dam came as no surprise to Ukrainian military planners. President Zelensky – whose hometown of Kryvyi Rih was among the areas hit by water shortages – warned last October that Russia had planted explosives on the structure.
Security officials in Kyiv yesterday said munitions were detonated remotely, blaming a motorized division based in the area. The operation created a “defensive gap” that could slow the speed of any advance, aided by heavy Russian fortifications. British defense expert Michael Clarke, a former member of the military think tank RUSI, said the evidence strongly pointed to Moscow being responsible.
Local resident Tetiana holds her pets, Tsatsa and Chunya, as she stands inside her home which was flooded after the Kakhovka dam exploded
A top Ukrainian scientist has predicted that around 100 km2 of land will be flooded, with flora and fauna in one of Europe’s most fertile regions suffering long-term damage from contamination from silt and salt. ‘water.
“This action supports Russia’s goals much more strongly than Ukraine’s,” he said. “So it’s very hard to believe that Ukraine would have done this, even if they could have done it. Remember, the explosion happened on the Russian side of the dam.
The reaction of Putin’s local cronies has been mixed. They initially denied there were any explosions, then said the dam had caved due to previous damage, before bragging about having overwhelmed enemy soldiers and finally blaming Ukraine for the shelling . The Kremlin’s denials were undermined by Yegor Guzenko, a Russian blogger, who claimed to have predicted an attack.
“How many times did I say that one day this dam would explode? he said. “We can blow up all the dams on Dnipro. It will only benefit us. This is not the first time that Russia has carried out such actions. In August 1941, retreating forces blew up a dam that powered Europe’s most powerful hydroelectric plant to thwart the Nazis.
So is Putin once again imitating Stalin with his destructive acts in Ukraine?
