The Nova Kakhovka dam collapsed on Tuesday morning. The Ukrainian government says a detonation has destroyed a section of the dam of one of the most important reservoirs on the Dnieper River. Nova Kakhovka, located in the southeast of the country, is a city occupied by Russia, in a sector of the front where the Dnieper marks the dividing line between the two armies. Kiev has accused Russia of blowing up the dam to stop the Ukrainian counteroffensive. The Russian version is that the infrastructure has been broken after being attacked by Ukrainian artillery.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of terrorism and summoned his National Security and Defense Council to an emergency meeting. "The destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant," Zelenskiy said on his social media profiles, "confirms to the whole world that [Russians] must be expelled from all corners of Ukrainian territory. They should not be allowed a single meter, because they use every meter for terror."
According to the Geneva Conventions, using infrastructure as a dam as a weapon of war is a war crime. Zelenskiy warned in October 2022 that Russian troops had placed explosive charges on the dam. Charles Michel, President of the European Council, has assumed that the responsibility for the disaster is Russian: "Dismayed by this unprecedented attack on the Nova Kakhovka dam. The destruction of civilian infrastructure is considered a war crime. We will hold Russia and its agents accountable." NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called the disaster "an outrageous act that proves once again the brutality of Russia's war in Ukraine."
The first alerts of citizens began to jump around five in the morning. Different enclaves of Nova Kakhovka such as pontoons, avenues, cafes, a park or a summer theater began to flood from 6.30, according to the mayor, Volodimir Kovalenko, to the newspaper Ukrainska Prvada. "The explosion is terrible because it not only affected the road, but also the dam and, unfortunately, the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant, that is, the engine room, which exploded. The destruction has been caused by the hand of man. The volume of water is falling rapidly at the moment," said the mayor. Kovalenko, mayor in exile (Nova Kakhovka, on the left bank of the river, is occupied by the Russians), acknowledges that there are problems in obtaining details about the consequences of the incident and do not even know if it was one or several explosions. In any case, it points without hesitation to Russian authorship.
Images of the damage to the dam of the Nova Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant, located in southeastern Ukraine, on Tuesday. Reuters
Water runs through the large gap in the Nova Kakhovka dam on Tuesday. AP
Destruction in the press of Nova Kakhovka, in an aerial image taken on Tuesday. AP
General view of the dam, this Tuesday, after the collapse. HANDOUT (AFP)
A man watches the water run sitting on a bench on the outskirts of Kherson, partially flooded after the dam burst. SERGIY DOLLAR (AFP)
Kherson area partially flooded after damage to Nova Kakhovka hydroelectric dam.SERGIY DOLLAR (AFP)
Image released by the Ukrainian government of the affected dam. AP
Russia blames Kiev
Russian authorities in Nova Kakhovka say the dam has not been detonated, but has broken after several Ukrainian attacks on infrastructure. Vladimir Leontiev, head of the Russian administration in the city, told Russia's state-run Tass news agency that the facilities had been attacked several times since last summer. Leontiev has confirmed that the dam dike continues to be destroyed and that it is impossible to control the water leak.
Satellite images of the levee provided by journalists from The Washington Post and NPR seem to show that in the last week the stretch of road that crosses over the dam, just above the place where the rupture has occurred, has disappeared. The Telegram accounts of leading Russian military analysts recall an interview last December in The Washington Post with General Andrii Kovalchuk in which he confirmed that tests with Himars missiles had been carried out at the dam to identify whether a controlled flooding of Russian positions was possible. Kovalchuk said this option had been ruled out.
Yegor Guzengo, a Russian soldier on the Kherson front and also known for his propaganda as a blogger, has shared a video in which he assumed that it had been his side that had detonated the explosive charges located in the dam.
The priority of the authorities is the evacuation of the municipalities closest to the river on its western bank, the one controlled by the Ukrainian army. From Nova Kakhovka to the city of Kherson, near the mouth, the river runs about 60 kilometers. Most of the inhabitants of these municipalities have previously left the area because they are close to the war front. The Kherson military administration estimates that 16,000 people must be evacuated immediately. The military administration of Nikopol, a town north of Nova Kakhovka, said the dam's water level was dropping by about 15 centimetres per hour.
The consequences of the dam collapse are catastrophic in multiple areas. There are a dozen villages at imminent risk of being flooded on the west bank and no longer habitable, according to Ukrainian authorities. Adding to the municipalities on the eastern bank, occupied by Russia, the Ukrainian government brings to 80 the inhabited nuclei that can be left under water. The ecological impact on the ecosystem will also be of great magnitude. The Swedish company Dämmningsverket published in October 2022 a computer simulation of what would be the consequences of destroying all the gates of the dam. Dämmningsverket estimated that the worst blow would be taken by the city of Kherson, with a rise in the water level of up to five meters.
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Ukrhydroenergo, the state-owned hydroelectric power company, said the dam's plant had also been underwater and destroyed. The dam's reservoir also supplied water for the Crimean peninsula. Water from the dam is used to cool the nuclear reactors of the Zaporizhia Atomic Power Plant. The plant has been occupied by Russia since March 2022. Energoatom, the Ukrainian state company that operated the facility and still oversees its operation, said it still had sufficient water and was monitoring the situation. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has experts at the plant, has reported that for the moment there is no risk to the safety of the plant.
Images released by Ukraine of the Nova Kakhovka dam.HANDOUT (AFP)
The consequences are also military. Ukraine has begun the first stages of the counteroffensive and the destruction of the dam, expanding the flooded areas along the Dnieper, add difficulty to possible amphibious assaults on the southern front. Three different companies of the Ukrainian special forces had confirmed in the last month to EL PAÍS that they had intensified their operations in Russian-controlled territory to locate enemy positions to be destroyed in a potential assault on the eastern fringe of the province of Kherson. Nova Kakhovka is strategic because if Ukraine manages to cross the river through the dam sector, it would open a flank in the Russian rear in the province of Zaporizhia, to the north, and open a new front towards Crimea, occupied by Russia since 2014.
The flooding of the plains around the river would affect both armies, but especially the attacker, as Mark Hertling, American lieutenant general and regular commentator on the war, has assessed in his social networks: "The indundation will affect both the Russian defensive belt and a potential Ukrainian river landing, its supply lines and a possible offensive in Kherson. " In this sector of the front, in addition to the first line of fire, on the bank of the Dnieper, Russian troops have raised three defensive fortified lines to stop a possible Ukrainian advance. The main defensive asset is still crossing such a wide river under artillery fire.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces have been introducing outposts on the east bank since early spring. Last March, the Ukrainian government even went so far as to announce that Nova Kakhovka had been released, only to acknowledge that it was incorrect information. "Nothing and no one, not a single Russian, will stop the liberation of Ukraine, for which the time has already come," the secretary of the National Security Council, Oleskii Danilov, wrote on his social networks.
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