The breach of a dam on the Dnipro River, a major strategic waterway in Ukraine, could lead to an environmental disaster for civilians in the region. On Tuesday, the dam in southern Ukraine collapsed, sending floods gushing toward surrounding towns and forcing hundreds of civilians to flee.
Satellite images showed that many towns and villages in the area between Nova Kakhovka and the Dniprovska Gulf, southwest of Kherson city on the Black Sea, were flooded.
The images show that the Nova Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric station have been largely destroyed. Houses and buildings are submerged in water, with many only their roofs showing. Water has also taken over parks, land, and infrastructure.
Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of causing the collapse. Ukraine's military intelligence said that Russian forces blew up the dam, while Russia's defense ministry said that Ukrainian forces shelled the dam.
"On the night of 6th June, the Kiev regime committed an unthinkable crime. Exploding the dam of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant, resulting in an uncontrolled discharge of water downstream on the Dnieper River. Settlements have been flooded," said Vasily Nebenzya Russia's UN Ambassador.
"Thousands of people are in need of evacuation, and that evacuation has already begun. Colossal damage has been dealt to the agriculture of the region and the ecosystem of the Dnieper Estuary. I want to emphasize that the leadership of the armed forces of Ukraine had openly declared their readiness to blow up this dam, to gain a military advantage as far back as last year," Mr Nevenzya added.
Meanwhile, Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine's UN Ambassador countered by terming the collapse of the dam as a "terrorist act against Ukrainian critical infrastructure".
"This is a terrorist act against Ukrainian critical infrastructure that aims at causing as many civilian casualties and as much destruction as possible," Mr Kyslytsya said. "My delegation requested this urgent meeting of the Security Council. As this regime has detonated a bomb of mass environmental destruction, which has led to the largest manmade disaster in Europe in decades.
"Let me note that Russia has been controlling the dam and the entire Kakhovka HBP for more than a year. It is physically impossible to blow it up somehow from the outside by shelling. It was mined by the Russian occupiers and they blew it up," he added.
The United Nations Security Council met on Tuesday to discuss the collapse of the dam.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the UN has no independent information on the circumstances that led to the destruction of the dam.
"But one thing is clear. This is another devastating consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine," he said as quoted by news agency AFP.
The Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant is a massive 30-meter-tall and 3.2-kilometer-long structure that spans the Dnipro River. It was built under Soviet leaders Josef Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s.
The dam created the Kakhovka reservoir, a vast body of water that covers 2,155 square kilometers. The reservoir holds 18 cubic kilometers of water, which is roughly equal to the volume of the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
