New Delhi:
A dam at the Kakhovka hydropower plant in Southern Ukraine has become the latest casualty in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, with both countries accusing the other of the attack. The dam blowing up has unleashed floodwaters in the war zone.
Here are 10 facts on this big story:
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The head of Ukraine’s presidential administration on Tuesday described the blast as an “ecocide” committed by Russian forces. Russia blamed Ukraine for the incident.
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Ukraine authorities have said that the water could reach critical levels in the next five hours. “Water will reach critical levels in five hours,” regional governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said in a video on his Telegram channel.
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Ten villages on the western bank of the Dnipro and a part of the city of Kherson face the risk of flooding and people were urged to prepare for evacuation.
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Unverified videos on social media showed water surging through the remains of the dam with bystanders expressing their shock, sometimes in strong language. Water levels raced up by metres in a matter of hours.
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President Volodymyr Zelensky has summoned Ukraine’s national security and defence council for an urgent meeting on the attack.
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The Kakhovka dam, seized at the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, notably supplies water to the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014.
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The reservoir also supplies cooling water to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said there was no immediate nuclear safety risk at the plant due to the dam failure but that it was monitoring the situation closely.
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“Multiple strikes targeted the Kakhovka dam” overnight in Nova Kakhovka, the head of the city’s Moscow-backed administration, Vladimir Leontiev said, claiming they had destroyed the dam’s gate valves and caused an “uncontrollable” flow of water.
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It is not clear yet how the flood waters would affect Ukraine’s long-planned counter-offensive against Russian forces who are dug in across southern and eastern Ukraine.
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Built on the Dnipro River in 1956, during the Soviet era, the structure is partly made of concrete and partly of earth. It is one of the largest pieces of infrastructure of its kind in Ukraine.
