Ukraine Dam Near Nuclear Plant Destroyed; Volodymyr Zelensky Requests Urgent Meeting

The latest casualty in the Russia-Ukraine conflict is a dam at the Kakhovka hydropower plant in Southern Ukraine, with both sides accusing the other of the attack. The dam’s failure has caused flooding in the war zone.

The regional governor, Oleksandr Prokudin said, “Water will reach critical levels in five hours”.

Ten settlements on the Dnipro’s western bank, as well as a portion of Kherson, are at risk of flooding and residents have been told to prepare for evacuation.

On Tuesday, the head of Ukraine’s presidential administration called the bombing an ecocide committed by Russian forces. Ukraine was blamed by Russia for the incident.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has called an emergency meeting of Ukraine’s national security and defence council to discuss the attack.

The Kakhovka dam, seized at the commencement of the Russian war in Ukraine feeds water to the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014.

The reservoir also serves as a cooling source for the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the dam break posed no immediate threat to nuclear safety at the plant, but it was monitoring the situation.

The head of the city’s Moscow-backed administration, Vladimir Leontiev said, “Multiple strikes targeted the Kakhovka dam overnight in Nova Kakhovka”, adding that they had destroyed the dam’s gate valves and caused an uncontrollable flow of water.

 It is unclear yet how the flood waters will affect Ukraine’s long-planned counter-offensive against the Russian military entrenched in southern and eastern Ukraine.

The structure was built on the Dnipro River in 1956, during the Soviet era, and is made of concrete pieces of the infrastructure of its kind in Ukraine.

Also read: Russia Claims United States’ F-16 Jets Could Carry Nuclear Weapons If Sent To Ukraine