Ukraine: Critical dam on Ukraine frontline damaged, thousands evacuating – Times of India

A major dam in southern Ukraine collapsed Tuesday, triggering floods, endangering crops in the country’s breadbasket and threatening drinking water supplies as both sides in the war scrambled to evacuate residents.
Ukraine accused Russia of blowing up the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River in a deliberate war crime. The Kremlin said it was Ukraine that had sabotaged the dam, to distract attention from the launch of a major counteroffensive Moscow says is faltering. Neither side offered immediate evidence of who was to blame. The Geneva Conventions explicitly ban targeting dams in war, because of the danger to civilians.
As water levels rose south of the dam, residents in the town of Antonivka, about 64km downstream, described watching in horror as floodwaters swept past carrying trees and debris from washed-out houses. Ukrainian emergency crews rushed to evacuate the most vulnerable on the western side of the river, while conservationists warned that a long-lasting environmental disaster was unfolding. It was more difficult to assess what was happening on the eastern bank of the river under Russian control. The disaster came one day after US and Russian officials said a planned Ukrainian counteroffensive might have begun east of the Dnipro in the Donetsk region.
The Kazkova Dibrova zoo on the Russian-held riverbank was completely flooded and all 300 animals were dead, a representative said. The dam supplies water to a wide area, including the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula, as well as cooling the Russian-heldZaporizhzhia nuclear plant.
Russia has controlled the dam since early in its 15-monthold invasion, although Ukrainian forces recaptured the Dnipro’s northern bank last year. Both sides had long accused the other of plotting to destroy thedam. “Russian terrorists,” President Zelensky said.
Russians had “carried out an internal detonation of the structures”, he claimed. Nato secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called it “ outrageous act”. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov blamed “deliberate sabotage: by Ukraine. Earlier, Russian-installed officials had given conflicting accounts, some saying the dam had been hit by Ukrainian missiles overnight, others saying it had burst on its own due to earlier damage.