This Russian brigade would have blown up the dam (according to the Ukrainians) Painting by Picasso raises 3.4 million euros in Cologne

According to information from Kiev, after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine, tens of thousands of people must be brought to safety from the floods. It is not yet clear how the dam burst. Russia and Ukraine blame each other.

Many Western politicians also hold Russia responsible. For example, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) accused Moscow of increasingly attacking civilian targets during the war, which has been going on for more than 15 months. “It’s also something that’s part of many, many of the crimes we’ve seen committed in Ukraine by Russian soldiers,” he said. “There is only one person responsible for this man-made environmental disaster: the Russian criminal war of aggression in Ukraine,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) said during a trip to Brazil.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg accused Moscow of endangering thousands of civilians and accepting severe environmental damage. “This is an outrageous act that once again demonstrates the brutality of the Russian war in Ukraine.” EU Council President Charles Michel was shocked by an “unprecedented attack”. British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly spoke of a war crime.

Military expert Carlo Masala also sees the perpetrator in Moscow: “Everything indicates that the Russians blew up the dam,” Masala told t-online (read more here). Last year there were reports that the Russian army had extensively mined the dam. As now, Kremlin forces were under pressure from a Ukrainian counter-offensive.

Selenskyj’s chief of staff, Yermak, had made a similar statement. He suspects that Russia wants to slow down the planned major Ukrainian offensive with the destruction. He wrote on Twitter that the blast also damaged agricultural irrigation in southern Ukraine.

According to his presidential office, Zelensky himself pointed out that Ukraine had been warning of exactly this scenario since Russian troops evacuated Kherson in the fall of 2022. Because Russia kept control of the dam and waterworks.

The Ukrainian armed forces announced that they would continue to recapture the occupied territories. Ukraine has “all necessary boats and pontoon bridges to overcome water obstacles,” the army said. The occupiers blew up the dam “out of fear of the Ukrainian army”.

Ukraine even thinks it knows which Russian brigade is responsible for the explosion. This is reported by the “Kyiv Independent”, citing the Ukrainian news agency Liga, which quotes the head of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksii Danilov. Accordingly, Danilov accused Russia’s 205th Motorized Rifle Brigade of carrying out the attack on the dam. The brigade members are stationed at the power plant near Russian-occupied Nowa Kakhovka and control the plant.

Russia denied any guilt. “We officially declare that this is clearly a case of deliberate sabotage by the Ukrainian side, planned and carried out on the orders (…) of the Kiev regime,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. He has not provided any evidence. President Vladimir Putin will be kept informed of any developments, he said.

German military expert Ralph Thiele also thinks it is possible that Ukraine is responsible for the explosion. “In fact, there are military advantages for both sides,” he said in an interview with t-online. Ukraine needs moments of surprise to act against Russian troops. Even if the devastating images make it hard to imagine, it’s possible Ukraine is using the dam breach to weaken its defense lines, Thiele said.

The Kakhovka Reservoir and the Dnipro River have been the front line in the Kherson region since last fall. The southern bank is dominated by Russian troops, the northern bank with the eponymous regional capital Kherson again after the reconquest by the Ukrainians. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Schmyhal spoke about the flood risk for up to 80 cities. Ukrainian authorities saw 16,000 people in danger along the northern bank. Military governor Olexander Prokudin initially reported that eight cities were completely or partially flooded. Initially, there was no information about the dead or injured. The humanitarian, ecological and military consequences of the floods are still incalculable.

In the city of Kherson, people have been living under Russian artillery fire for months. Aerial photographs showed that in the Korabel district only the roof of many single-storey houses protruded above the water. There was hardly any information about the situation on the flat south bank in Russian hands. In Nowa Kakhovka, close to the dam wall, the Russian government reported flooding.

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