Ukraine dam breach threatens Crimea’s water supply, igniting geopolitical tensions

A gaping hole punched in Ukraine’s Nova Kakhovka Dam that unleashed a wall of floodwater means the canal that has traditionally met most of Crimea’s water needs is receiving drastically less water, the Kremlin warned on Tuesday.

Russia and Ukraine have blamed each other for the breach at the Russian-controlled dam, a human and ecological disaster that coincided with intensified efforts by Kyiv to retake territory seized by Russian forces.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov alleged on Tuesday that one aim of what he cast as a Ukrainian attack was to deprive Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, of fresh water. Kyiv, which wants to retake Crimea, says Russia was behind the incident. Neither offered immediate evidence proving who was to blame.

Unverified videos on social media showed water surging through what was left of the dam, which straddles the Dnipro River and is part of a complex that includes an enormous reservoir, which holds a volume of water — 18km³ — roughly equal to the Great Salt Lake in the US state of Utah.

The reservoir feeds the Soviet-era North Crimean Canal — a channel that has traditionally supplied 85% of Crimea’s water. Most of that water is used for agriculture, some for industry and about one-fifth for drinking water and other public needs.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the incident looked like a calculated Ukrainian attempt to choke off water supplies to the peninsula.

“Clearly one of the aims of this act of sabotage was to deprive Crimea of water — the water level in the reservoir is dropping and, accordingly, the water supply to the canal is being drastically reduced,” said Peskov.

Russia had taken measures to alleviate Crimea’s water supply problem before access to the canal was restored last year, meaning there was now a certain “margin of safety” however, he said.

Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-backed head of Crimea, said there was no immediate threat to the peninsula’s water supply or any risk of flooding, but flagged a potentially serious threat ahead.

“There is a risk that the Northern Crimean Canal will get more shallow,” he said, an event that could reduce water supplies in time.

For now, though, Aksyonov said Crimea’s reservoirs were filled to about 80% capacity and that the Northern Crimean Canal currently held about 40 million cubic metres of water.

“There is more than enough drinking water. Efforts are under way to minimise water losses in the canal,” he said in a statement on the Telegram messaging application.

The coming days would allow officials to get a clearer picture of what was happening and the risks, he said.

Water geopolitics

The canal was blocked by Ukraine after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, something that led to acute water shortages on the peninsula that ended only after Russian forces seized the canal when they invaded on February 24 last year.

Russian officials cited restoring access to the canal as one of the advantages of what Moscow still calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Before the war, President Vladimir Putin and other top officials held frequent meetings on Crimea’s water problems, trying to devise plans — from drilling wells to building desalination plants — that would allow the peninsula to become fully autonomous when it came to its water supply.

Mikhail Razvozhaev, the Russian-installed governor of the Crimean city of Sevastopol, the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, played down any immediate threat to water supplies.

“Water supply to the city will not be affected by damage to the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power plant in any way. The city uses its own reservoir, water reserves are at a maximum and there are also reserve sources of water supply,” he said on Telegram.

In November of last year — when both Moscow and Kyiv accused each other of plotting to blow up the dam — Vladimir Konstantinov, a top Russian-backed official in Crimea, said the peninsula had enough water in its own reservoirs when they were full to meet its needs for two years even if it didn’t rain.

He said, however, that the Russian-backed authorities were relying on the canal as “a source for Crimea’s development”. 

Reuters