This screen grab from a video posted on Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Twitter account on June 6, 2023 shows an aerial view of the dam of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station after it was partially destroyed. AFP PHOTO /Twitter / Account of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky @ZelneskyyUa
Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s President’s Office, posted a video showing swans swimming near an administrative building in the flooded streets of Russian-occupied Nova Kakhovka, a city in the Kherson region where some 45,000 people lived before the war. Other footage he posted showed flood waters reaching the second floor of the building.
Ukraine’s nuclear operator Energoatom said in a Telegram statement that the damage to the dam “could have negative consequences” for the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is Europe’s biggest, but wrote that for now the situation is “controllable.” Ukrainian authorities have previously warned that the dam’s failure could unleash 18 million cubic meters of water and flood Kherson and dozens of other areas where hundreds of thousands of people live.The World Data Center for Geoinformatics and Sustainable Development, a Ukrainian nongovernmental organization, estimated that nearly 100 villages and towns would be flooded. It also reckoned that the water level would start dropping only after five-seven days.
The incident also drew international outrage, including from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who said the “outrageous act ⦠demonstrates once again the brutality of Russia’s war in Ukraine.”