![]() ![]() Some of the people had made it here from Russian-occupied areas on the east bank of the Dnieper River. WATCH: Boat after boat of exhausted and stressed civilians arrived in the flooded streets of Kherson on June 7. “The destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant dam only confirms for the whole world that they must be expelled from every corner of Ukrainian land.” “Russian terrorists,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a post to social media. “The station cannot be restored,” it said. The national hydroelectric power company said the breach was caused by an explosion inside the engine room. on June 6, Ukrainian officials said, part of the dam gave way, and in the following hours, the upstream water pushed through until the breach widened. ![]() They have also used the eastern bank to hammer Kherson city and surrounding districts, terrorizing the area and providing a sobering counterpoint to the elation that followed Kherson’s liberation by Ukrainian forces in November. Since retreating from the western bank, Russian forces have dug in on the opposite bank, building fortifications and trenches and laying mine fields to deter any potential Ukrainian river crossing. That’s led some outside observers to warn of the possibility that the dam may have collapsed on its own – out of neglect, deliberate or not - particularly given how swollen the upriver reservoir was, from spring melt of winter snows and runoff. And it comes as Ukraine gears up for what is expected to be a major new counteroffensive against Russian forces, one that could change the course of the war. The incident comes about six months after Ukraine seized back parts of the Kherson region on the west bank of the Dnieper River, including the city of Kherson. For their part, Russian officials in occupied territories on the Dnieper's east bank accused Ukraine of destroying the dam to cover up for what they called a lack of battlefield successes. Ukraine immediately lay the blame on Russia, which has controlled the facility since just after the February 2022 invasion. The breach sent torrents of water cascading downstream, inundating villages and towns, prompting evacuations of thousands, drowning fields, and swamping farmlands and marshlands. The Nova Kakhovka dam, a decades-old, Soviet-era hydroelectric facility spanning the mighty Dnieper River in southern Ukraine, was breached sometime overnight on June 6. ![]()
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