KHERSON, Ukraine – Distraught residents of Ukraine’s Kherson evacuated their homes under artillery fire on Tuesday, June 6, after they were flooded by the rupture of a vast dam upstream in a disaster that Kyiv and Moscow have blamed on each other.
Mykola, a 73-year-old pensioner, traipsed down the street towards dry land, soaked from the shoulders down and carrying what few possessions he could save. He said the water in his apartment had been up to his chest.Shelter could not be easily found, as water crept silently higher and higher on Kherson’s streets.
Kherson, which had a pre-war population of nearly 300,000, was occupied by Russian forces for eight months after Moscow invaded Ukraine last year. Speaking on Tuesday evening, she said the water was 3.5 meters higher than before the dam had collapsed, and that it was still rising, albeit at a slower rate of about 6 cm every 30 minutes, about half the rate observed earlier in the day.