“The water level in the previously flooded streets of Nova Kakhovka has started to drop,” said the administration of the city, now under Russian control.
The Nova Kakhovka dam, located in the Russian-controlled parts of the Kherson region, experienced a partial collapse, amid questions and speculation about the possible impact of this destruction on the military equations of the Ukrainian war.
Earlier on Tuesday, a torrent of water poured through a breach in a dam on the Dnipro River separating Russian and Ukrainian forces in southern Ukraine, flooding large swathes of the combat zone and forcing the villagers to flee.
By Tuesday afternoon, the embankment of a tributary of the Dnipro was already flooded in the city of Kherson, in the region controlled by the Ukrainian government.
Mutual accusations between Russia and Ukraine
The Russian and Ukrainian sides swapped accusations about the author of the accident, in a scene that did not show the fact that the dam had been shelled and directly targeted, or that the collapse had occurred as a result of the shelling that took place near the dam during the Ukrainian war. The Southern Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Tuesday that Russian forces had blown up the Nova Kakhovka Dam, located in the Russian-controlled parts of the Kherson region. The management added on its Facebook page: “The extent of the damage, the speed and the quantities of water, as well as the areas likely to be flooded are being determined”. The TASS news agency quoted the Moscow-appointed mayor of Nova Kakhovka as saying that the upper part of the dam had been destroyed as a result of the shelling. A Russian official described the incident as a “terrorist attack”.
What is the strategic importance of the dam?
The dam is located on the Dnipro River, next to the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station, and contains 18 million cubic meters of water. Its height is 30 meters and its length is 3.2 km It was completed in 1956. The dam behind it formed a lake roughly similar in size to the Great Salt Lake in the US state of Utah , and it also supplies water to Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. The Kakhovka dam is considered Kherson’s main weak point, as its destruction would be a real disaster, just as blowing up the dam would destroy the system of irrigation canals in most of southern Ukraine, including Crimea (subjugated to the Russians).
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