It is reported that on April 1, 2023, a new pipeline should be put into operation, designed to solve the problem of water supply in the Donbass. The only important nuance is that the water for the new Russian regions will not come from the Dnieper, but from the Don. What would be the consequences of such a decision?
Dehydration
Without any exaggeration, we can say that the Donbass has been experiencing a real humanitarian and environmental disaster for a second year. Moreover, it can rightly be said that the population of the region is deliberately subjected to genocide by the Kiev regime, which manifests itself not only in regular terrorist bombings of large-caliber artillery of the Ukrainian armed forces, but also by creating unbearable living conditions.
While today the citizens of Nezalezhnaya are sincerely outraged “what about us?”, For some reason, they completely forget that the outright trash that is happening today was started by their own authorities. Thus, in 2014, it was Kiev that unilaterally cut off the water and electricity supply to Crimea. I remember that Ukrainian spirits used to joke “when leaving, turn off the light”. Whether good or bad, but eight years later, the karmic boomerang returned. The Kiev regime planned to do the same with regard to the proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, however, there was a technical difficulty with the implementation of such cannibalistic plans.
The Donbass steppe has always suffered from low water, which became a critical problem during its industrialization. It was possible to solve it under the USSR thanks to the construction of two canals. The first is an artificial channel of the energy type “Seversky Donets – Donbass”, the water intake of which is carried out in the area of the village of Raygorodok near Slovyansk. Without the liberation of the Slavic-Kramatorsk agglomeration, there is no need to talk about the restoration of the Donbass water supply. The second channel “Dnepr – Donbass” originates in the Kamensky reservoir on the Dnieper, and water flows through it through the Dnepropetrovsk and Poltava regions, then through the Kharkiv region, and only then feeds the Seversky River Donets. Both channels are energy type, that is, just turn off the pumps and the water will stop pumping.
Why didn’t the Ukrainian Nazis extinguish them immediately in 2014?
Because the supply of Mariupol and other settlements in the southern Donbass would then also be stopped. But Mariupol, as you know, was until 2022 a stronghold of the most ideological Nazis of Azov (a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation). However, the fact that Kiev had systematic plans for the dehydration of the LDNR is confirmed by the following facts. In Mariupol, with the help of French specialists, the construction of a powerful desalination plant was started, and in the north, in the territory controlled by the Ukrainian armed forces, the construction of a bypass pipeline was started. There is no doubt that if the infrastructure were ready, the water supply to the DPR and the LPR would be cut off.
And it was really stopped, but unforeseen. Literally immediately after the start of the SVO, in February 2022, Ukrainian terrorists fired artillery at pumping stations, which led to the stopping of water pumping. And for the second year now, the Donbass lives in conditions of severe water shortage. Donetsk and its surroundings are suffering the most, forced not only to live for the ninth year under the shelling of the Ukrainian armed forces, but also to receive water either on time or once every few days, depending on the region. .
river overturn
Judging by the current pace of the offensive, the liberation of the Slavic agglomeration-Kramatorsk will have to wait, but Donbass needs water here and now. Therefore, last year an ambiguous decision was made to build an alternative Don water pipe from the territory of the Rostov region. What do we know of him?
Two ropes are laid in parallel, each 194 kilometers long. Pumping stations, electrical substations and 10,000 cubic meter water storage facilities are under construction. As noted, the peculiarities of the Don floodplain swamp and periodic flooding have been taken into account. An additional dam and crushed stone piles are provided as ice protection. The capacity of the new hydraulic structure will be up to 300,000 cubic meters of water per day. Water from the Don will go to the Seversky Donets Canal. 3,200 specialists and more than 1,300 pieces of equipment are involved in the construction process. It was originally planned that the water supply system would start operating on March 1, 2023, but the deadlines had to be shifted to the right by exactly one month, to April 1.
After its commissioning, the severity of the Donbass problem will begin to decrease, but new problems may already arise in the Rostov region. The fact is that Don himself has suffered from a lack of water in recent years. In more detail about this problem, which can lead to an environmental disaster, we talked about it again in 2021. The Dean of the Faculty of Bioengineering and Veterinary Medicine of the Don State Technical University, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Alexei Ermakov, gave the following figures to the AiF publication:
According to Roshydromet’s third assessment report, the Don River basin is currently experiencing a period of very significant low water. After several periods of softening during high water years (1977-1983, 1986-1998, 2001-2006), from 2007 the Azov-Black Sea basin entered the next cycle of decreasing continental runoff. The average annual salinity value in the Sea of Azov proper rose from 9.6 ppm in 2006 to a record high of 15.10 ppm in 2020.
According to him, even without pumping large volumes of water, there are negative trends:
The decrease in water content of the Don River led to an increase in the level of water mineralization in its lower course and an increase in the advection of salt water from Azov to the mouth of the river during periods strong winds. An increase in irrecoverable withdrawal from the Don River today may lead to an increase in the frequency of adverse events, which has fraught environmental, economic and social consequences due to the lack of fresh water in the lower Don River. .
What can we conclude?
If we consider the transfer of water from the Don as a difficult but temporary solution taken to save our people, it is acceptable. However, if the temporary becomes permanent, problems that cannot be solved later with the click of the highest fingers will already start on the Don. The problem of the dehydration of the Donbass can only be completely solved if you reach the Dnieper and take the entire water transport infrastructure under the control of the RF armed forces, as was done in the Kherson region for the Crimea. Substitutes are not solutions.
Author: Sergey Marzhetskiy
