Blast hits hydro-electric plant and dam, flooding south Ukraine

It was not clear who was responsible for the explosion, which occurred as Kyiv stepped offensive operations on the eastern fronts as part of what is expected to be a major counterattack over the coming weeks. Ukraine and Russia quickly traded blame for the blast.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of blowing up the hydroelectric power plant from inside.

“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,” Zelensky said in a message on Telegram.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed the attack was “a deliberate sabotage by the Ukrainian side,” in part to deprive Crimea of water. “Apparently, this sabotage is related to the fact that the Ukrainian armed forces, having started the offensive two days ago, are not achieving their goals now,” Peskov said Tuesday during his daily conference call with reporters.

Ukraine’s state-owned hydropower company, in a statement on Telegram, said the hydroelectric plant was “completely destroyed” as a result of an explosion inside the engine room.

Aerial videos showed heavy structural damage to the dam, which appeared to be missing sections measuring hundreds of feet. By 9 a.m., reservoir levels were rapidly decreasing as water poured out, officials said. A video shared by Ukraine’s public broadcaster appeared to show that water had almost covered the hydroelectric station.

Natalia Humeniuk, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian military’s southern command, said in a radio interview that the dam was not completely destroyed but sustained serious damage. She accused the Russians of blowing up the dam using explosives to prevent Ukraine from carrying out its expected counteroffensive.

In the Russian-occupied town of Nova Kakhovka, adjacent to the dam, water levels were several feet high in front of the city council building, according to video published by Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne. Swans could be seen swimming in the water.

The dam sits at the end of the Dnieper River, in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, where a reservoir stores roughly the same amount of water as the Great Salt Lake in Utah.

The fast-rising water levels threaten residents from northern Kherson, where the dam is located, down to the Black Sea. Its reservoir also supplies water, through canals, to occupied Crimea and to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, in Russian-controlled Enerhodar. Ukraine’s atomic energy authorities said the nuclear plant has not been affected by the dam breach so far.

Ukrainian officials blamed Russia and called the situation an ecological disaster.

“Russia destroyed the Kakhovka dam inflicting probably Europe’s largest technological disaster in decades and putting thousands of civilians at risk,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted. “This is a heinous war crime.”

Ukrainian authorities in Kherson urged residents to evacuate, while the Russian occupying authorities who still hold territory in the Kherson region east of the Dnieper River appeared to play down potential consequences.

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Vladimir Leontyev, the mayor of Russian-occupied Nova Kakhovka, said water levels have risen by 16 feet, flooding several downstream settlements. Those in the immediate vicinity of the water are being moved to dry places, he said, but “large-scale” evacuations were not expected.

“The situation is under control,” Leontyev said. “The Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant was built in such a way as to be able to withstand a nuclear strike.” He said the upper part of the hydroelectric plant has been destroyed but that the dam was only partially damaged.

Ukrainian authorities on the west bank, however, urged residents to evacuate immediately. Oleksandr Prokudin, the Ukrainian head of the Kherson region, said on national television that 16,000 people were located in what he described as the “critical” danger zone on the right bank of the river.

“In five hours, the water will rise to a critical level,” Prokudin said Tuesday morning. “The evacuation of residents to safer areas has begun.”

Even as the floodwaters rose, Russian forces continued bombing Kherson city, which is controlled by Ukraine, and the surrounding areas. Two policemen from Kherson were wounded by shrapnel during evacuation measures in the city, according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said up to 80 settlements downstream from the dam, in both Russian-occupied and Ukrainian-held territories, are at risk of flooding. The affected area is likely to be more than 38 square miles, according to Yevhen Korzhov from Kherson’s department of aquatic bioresources and aquaculture.

The explosion at the power plant did not directly affect the stability of the country’s energy system, according to a statement from Ukraine’s Ministry of Fuel and Energy. But it put other energy facilities in the region, including the Kherson Thermal Power Plant, at risk of flooding. In addition, about 12,000 households in Kherson’s Ostriv district were left without power due to the flooding.

Residents are being evacuated from Kherson city’s Ostriv district, and evacuation trains have been put in place from Kherson to the city of Mykolaiv. Shmyhal said Kyiv was trying to monitor the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant but that the government’s ability to do so was limited by Russia’s occupation.

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At least 885 people have been evacuated from Ukrainian-held areas of the Kherson region, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said in a Telegram post.

“Water is coming,” Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.” The situation is complicated by the fact that some roads are washed away. This makes it impossible to travel to individual settlements. Evacuation teams are looking for other ways.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg described the explosion at the dam as “an outrageous act” that demonstrates the “brutality” of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“The destruction of the Kakhovka dam today puts thousands of civilians at risk and causes severe environmental damage,” Stoltenberg tweeted.

Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia contributed to this report.

Sources: Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, OpenstreetMap, Openinframap. Brady Africk, who analyzed satellite imagery from Copernicus Open Access Hub, provided fortifications data, which does not include all fortifications in Ukraine; some defenses predate Russia’s full-scale invasion.