Russian ‘terrorists’ must be expelled from Ukraine, Zelensky says after dam blast

Moscow/Kyiv — Russia’s destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine confirms that Moscow's forces “must be expelled” from all of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday.

“Russian terrorists. 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,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

“Not a single metre should be left to them, because they use every meter for terror,”  Zelensky wrote.

The water level around the dam is up by 5m, with several downstream islands already entirely flooded, Russian state-owned news agency RIA reported, citing local authorities. Blasts at a Soviet-era dam in the Russian controlled part of southern Ukraine on Tuesday unleashed floodwaters across the war zone, according to both Ukrainian and Russian forces who blamed each other for blowing-up the dam.

Unverified videos on social media showed a series of intense explosions around the Kakhovka dam. Other videos showed water surging through the remains of the dam with bystanders expressing their shock, sometimes in strong language.

The dam, 30m tall and 3.2km long, was built in 1956 on the Dnipro river as part of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant.

It also supplies water to the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, and to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which is also under Russian control.

Russian-installed officials said there was no danger yet to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, from the destruction of the dam. The nuclear power station gets its cooling water from the reservoir.

Ukraine’s military said that Russian forces blew up the dam while Russian sources blamed Ukraine.

“The Kakhovka ([am] was blown up by the Russian occupying forces,” the South command of Ukraine's Armed Forces said on Tuesday on its Facebook page.

“The scale of the destruction, the speed and volumes of water, and the likely areas of inundation are being clarified.”

Russian news agencies said the dam, controlled by Russian forces, had been destroyed in shelling while a Russian-installed official said it was a terrorist attack — Russian shorthand for an attack by Ukraine.

The Russia-installed head of the Kherson region said evacuation near the dam had begun and that water would reach critical levels within five hours.

Reuters was unable to immediately verify the battlefield accounts from either side.

Zelensky will hold an emergency meeting over the Nova Kakhova dam blast in southern Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said on Twitter on Tuesday.

It was not immediately clear how the flood waters would affect Ukraine’s long-planned counteroffensive against Russian forces who are dug in across southern and eastern Ukraine. 

With Felix Light

Reuters