Blowing up the Kakhovka HPP is an attempt to destroy the South of Ukraine by a “Freshwater Tsunami”

At 3 am in the morning on June 6, 2023, Russian occupiers blew up the dam of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant. The release of massive volumes of water from the Kakhovka Sea, a vast territory in the south of Ukraine, has appeared to be under threat of being flooded. The devastation of agricultural lands may be not the only long-term consequence of this huge Russian crime. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is also in danger, as its reactors are being cooled down with water from Dnipro.

Ukraine’s response: evacuation of the population, the convention of the UN Security Council, the liberation of its land

Terrified by the Ukrainian offensive, Russians resort to crimes that are clearly interpreted by international law as state terrorism. The people in south Ukraine controlled by the Ukrainian government are being evacuated. They are leaving from Kherson on emergency evacuation trains. According to Oleksandr Prokudin, head of Kherson military administration, nearly 16 thousand people in the region were found to be in the critical zone on the right bank of Dnipro due to the explosion at Kakhovka HPP.

Regarding the left bank, which is currently under temporary occupation by Russian fascists, there is a lack of reliable information. However, it is possible that tens of thousands of people are in peril.During the meeting of the National Security and Defense Council, urgently convened by President Zelenskyi, Council members were informed that at least 150 tons of machine oil were poured into the Dnipro River, and there is a chance that another 300 tons might enter the river. In the meantime, eighty settlements are in danger of flooding.

Meeting participants agreed on the set of international measures to be taken, including the   convening of the UN Security Council meeting, appeal to international environmental organisations, International Criminal Court, since such actions of the Russians have evident signs of Geneva Convention violation.

Dmytro Kuleba, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, noted on his Twitter account: “Russia destroyed the Kakhovka dam, inflicting probably Europe’s largest technological disaster in decades  and putting thousands of civilians at risk. This is a heinous war crime. The only way to stop Russia, the greatest terrorist of the 21st century, is to kick it out of Ukraine.”

Nova Kakhovka: monuments and memory of the first city to be flooded the flow is finishing dam ruination

The first hydroelectric generator was launched in 1955 after the decision to construct Kakhovka HPP was adopted in 1950. The hydroelectric power plant began operating at full capacity in October 1959, generating 312 MW of power. For the construction and maintenance of the power plant, the involvement of thousands of workers and specialists was required, and a new city – Nova Kakhovka – was built in 1952. The city centre, which is now under the threat of flooding, is famous for its sophisticated building decorations – “stone embroidery” created by Hryhorii Dovzhenko, Mykhailo Boichuk’s student.

The city park near the Dnipro River was created by the famous Ukrainian gardener Stepan Faldzinskyi, and renowned director Oleksandr Dovzhenko was involved in planting trees. The park was flooded by Dnipro waters today. At the time of this publication writing, the water has already reached the central street of the city, Dniprovskyi Avenue, and the city hall building has been flooded.

The water level difference between Kakhovka Reservoir and Dnipro behind the HPP is about 12 metres, while the reservoir itself contains 18.2 cubic kilometres of water. The mass of one cubic kilometre of water reaches 1 billion tons. If the dam were to be destroyed in a single moment, such a mass of water would ruin everything in its path, even if the wave was not high. Therefore, tsunamis are so dangerous when gigantic masses of ocean waters devastate everything exposed to the impact of such a wave.

The Russians are unleashing a freshwater tsunami in the southern part of our country by blowing up the Kakhovka HPP dam. Ultimately, the issue lies in the fact that the water that has broken through the blown-up dam sections will continue causing destruction to the dam. As of midday on 6 June, 11 out of 28 dam spans were known to be destroyed. This is the reason why, without exaggeration, the aftermath of this crime may be catastrophic.

It is impossible to reach an agreement with Russia, it must be kicked out of Ukraine for good.

A disaster of this size has immediate consequences – the death of people, damage to housing, and destruction of crops, and long-term outcomes that will be felt years and decades later. Water masses may wash out the not-so-thick layer of fertile soil and silt up cultivated areas of the south of Ukraine, disrupting the irrigation and water supply system, which will require years to restore.

How to revitalize soils and provide employment for hundreds of thousands of village dwellers who once worked in agriculture is yet unknown. And this is not to speak about mass death of fish, birds, and wild animals. Furthermore, the destruction of Kakhovka Reservoir threatens the supply of fresh water not just to the southern oblasts of Ukraine, but to the Crimea as well.

It looks like Russians, horrified by Ukraine’s imminent return to its lands and realising that the aggressive war they unleashed is leading to unavoidable defeat, decided to turn the blooming lands of the Ukrainian south into a desert. In this particular context, the calls made by certain foreign  politicians and leaders to engage in negotiations with the Kremlin on Russian terms are merely a  form of support for international terrorism and the crime of genocide committed against Ukrainians.

Russia has once again confirmed that it is not only incapable of negotiating, but also poses a direct threat to the existence of the global civilization. Criminals who do not hesitate to commit the worst and unimaginable crimes against the civilian population hold power in the enormous country. Russian occupiers destroy Ukrainians and try to turn the territories they deem theirs into the desert unsuitable for human existence, while talking about the brotherhood of nations and mutual history.

Destroying Dnipro dams and thus killing people is their “tradition.”

On 18 August 1941, while retreating from Ukraine, Soviet troops blew up the dam of Dnipro HPP (also known at that time as Dniprelstan) The explosion was carried out in a futile attempt to delay the advance of German troops. The explosion resulted in the destruction of the dam, and as reported by the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung newspaper in March 1942, the incident resulted in the deaths of at least 3,000 individuals, although some subsequent publications have reported the death toll as high as nearly 100,000. Moreover, the dam was blown up along with retreating parts of the Red Army that were trying to use it to get to the left bank of Dnipro. Nobody has ever counted the number of Red Army soldiers and officers who died there.

The practice of leaving the scorched earth behind, which was used during ancient times and the Middle Ages, was borrowed and adopted by communists and Nazis, as well as their ideological heirs in the 21st century. The 1941 explosions in Kyiv and Kharkiv, accompanied by the use of “torchman” squads to set fire to peasant houses, are considered a “common practice” of modern Russians in the field of warfare, and in fact fall under the category of war crimes and genocide.

The perpetrators are known. By name.

They will be held responsible soon Atesh guerilla movement, created by Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar patriots in the occupied territory, announced in their Telegram channel that they knew direct organisers and perpetrators of the crime of blowing up Kakhovka HPP – these are soldiers of the 1st battalion of the 205th motorised rifle brigade from Budionovsk, Stavropol Krai of Russia. According to Atesh, colonel of the Armed Forces of the RF Eduard Shandur, is the brigade commander. Terrorists in the ranks of the Russian army and their commanders in Moscow should not even hope that this crime, like thousands of others committed by them in Ukraine, will remain unpunished. The Ukrainian army, Ukrainian special forces will come for everyone and make them pay for the attempts to destroy the people “whose power of truth has not yet been conquered by anyone...” And this is not going to happen, no matter how hard the Russians try to do it in their last convulsions of the imperial disease of destruction.

Dmytro Redko, Kyiv