Impacts: 2
The partial destruction of the Kajovka dam in southern Ukraine, of which Moscow and Kiev blame each other, caused flooding in some twenty towns on Tuesday, June 6, and forced the evacuation of thousands of people. Ukraine will resume evacuation and assistance tasks in the affected areas on Wednesday after the sudden incident, after the Ukrainian president pointed out to Russia for having detonated an “environmental bomb of mass destruction.”
Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky blamed Russian troops for blowing up the Kherson region dam in what he described as “the biggest environmental disaster caused by Europe in decades.”
“It is physically impossible to blow it up this way from the outside, by bombing. Mines were placed”, accused the Ukrainian president, who also ruled out the hypothesis of accident or negligence. “It was a deliberate explosion. They knew exactly what they were doing,” he remarked.
“This crime carries enormous threats and will have serious consequences for people’s lives and the environment,” warned the Ukrainian president.
The United States warned that there could be many deaths, while Moscow and Kiev blamed each other for the attack on the Kakhovka dam, which supplies cooling water to Europe’s largest Zaporizhia nuclear plant.