On Tuesday, the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting on the destruction of the dam at the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station.
It took place on Tuesday afternoon, and in addition to the members of the Security Council, Martin Griffiths, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, took the floor.
Griffiths noted that he reported on the situation in Ukraine for members of the Security Council just three weeks ago. Then he spoke of the human losses due to the conflict, the difficulties of medical assistance, water supply, electricity, heating for thousands of people. Now, after the destruction of the dam of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station, the situation will worsen.
“The urgent humanitarian needs of the people will increase because water from the dam will continue to flood the areas and there will be more accurate assessments of the current situation and there will be a clearer response,” Griffiths said. – The dam is a key source of agricultural irrigation for southern Kherson and the Crimean peninsula. The floods we see today will disrupt agriculture, destroy livestock and fisheries and have long term consequences. This is a blow to the food industry, which is already quite destroyed.
The Ukrainian and Russian sides accuse each other of having destroyed the dam of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station.
“My delegation has called for an emergency meeting of the Security Council, because this (Russian) regime has detonated a bomb of mass destruction of the environment, and this has led to the biggest man-made catastrophe in Europe since decades,” said Serhiy Kyslytsya, Permanent Representative of Ukraine. at the UN, during the meeting. – This is a terrorist attack on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, the aim of which is to destroy the greatest number of civilians and the greatest destruction … Let me remind you that Russia controls the dam and the entire Kakhovka hydroelectric power station for more than a year. It is physically impossible to destroy it from the outside by bombardment. It was mined by the Russian invaders and blew it up.
The Russian representative made accusations of retaliation.
“On the night of June 6, the Kiev regime committed an unthinkable crime – blowing up the dam of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station, as a result of which an uncontrolled discharge of water began downstream of the Dnieper,” said Vasily Nebenzya, the Russian President. permanent representative to the United Nations. – Flooded colonies. Thousands of people must be evacuated, and this has already begun, enormous damage has been caused to the region’s agriculture and the ecosystem of the Dnieper. I want to point out that the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine openly stated that they were ready to blow up this dam for military advantage last year.
The US representative regretted that the Security Council is meeting urgently to discuss the disaster that has occurred – the destruction of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric dam. Robert Wood called the destruction “another casualty of Russia’s brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine”. He recalled that it was Russia that started this war – and that it was Russian troops who illegally seized the dam last year.
“Targeted attacks against civilian targets are prohibited by the laws of war,” said Robert Wood, US deputy permanent representative to the UN. – Russia, as a country that has ratified the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, has pledged not to attack buildings and structures containing “dangerous elements, including dams”, if such an attack could lead to the release of these dangerous elements and casualties among the civilian population. The international community has once again come face to face with the devastation, massive loss of life and catastrophic damage inflicted on Ukraine’s infrastructure by Russia’s illegal war.”
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