After explosions at a major dam and hydroelectric plant that sparked a humanitarian disaster and mass flooding in the Kherson region, Ukraine has warned that Russia may be plotting to blow up the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.
A series of blasts Wednesday morning caused the critical Nova Kahkovka dam, which lies along the Dnieper river in Russian-held territory, to partially collapse and led to ‘catastrophic’ floods.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of detonating an ‘environmental bomb of mass destruction’, saying authorities expected up to 80 settlements to be flooded and urging the world to ‘react’.
‘This crime carries enormous threats and will have dire consequences for people’s lives and the environment,’ Zelensky said, while US security officials warned there would likely be ‘many deaths’ as a result of the floods.
The Kremlin meanwhile has blamed Ukraine for the blast, claiming it was a ploy by Kyiv to distract from the launch of a major counteroffensive Moscow says is faltering.
Russian President Vladimir Putin described the attack on the dam as a ‘barbaric act’.
But Zelensky’s top security official Oleksiy Danilov dismissed the allegations and said that Putin’s next step may be to attack the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which lies just 80 miles up the river from Kakhovka and relies on water from the dam to cool its reactors.
Mr Danilov told the Times that since Putin has entered ‘a fundamentally new stage of Russian aggression’ and that since he ‘had the hydroelectric power plant blown up on his demand, he’s ready to do anything.’
The destruction of the dam on the Dnieper River, which separates Russian and Ukrainian forces in southern Ukraine, is set to displace tens of thousands of people.
The cause of the blasts is not yet clear, although Ukraine warned late last year that Russian forces had mined the dam as they retreated from Kherson and Ukraine’s state hydroelectric company said the Kakhovka plant was destroyed by an explosion in the engine room – suggesting it was attacked from within rather than by external strikes.
Ukrainian authorities said 17,000 people were being evacuated and a total of 24 villages had been flooded.
‘Over 40,000 people are in danger of being flooded,’ Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said, adding that 25,000 more people needed to be evacuated on the Russian-occupied side of the Dnieper.
