President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said that the Russians had mined the Kakhovskaya dam and hydropower units in the Kherson region and were planning to carry out a terrorist attack under a “false flag”, AFP and Ukrainian Pravda report.

“Russia is deliberately laying the groundwork for a large-scale disaster in the south of Ukraine. We have information that Russian terrorists mined the dam and structures of the Kakhovskaya HPP.

This is one of the largest power plants. Its dam contains approximately 18,000,000 cubic meters of water. If Russian terrorists blow up this dam, more than 80 settlements, including Kherson, will be in the zone of sudden flooding. Hundreds of thousands of people could be affected.

This could destroy the water supply of most of southern Ukraine. This Russian terrorist attack could leave the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZPP) without cooling water, as the ZPP draws water from the Kakhovsky Reservoir.

According to Zelenskyi, in general, the environmental, humanitarian and technological consequences of this Russian terrorist attack can be characterized as a “historical catastrophe”.

The Institute for the Study of War, in its latest assessment of the conflict in Ukraine, said that the Uzbeks wanted to cover up their possible defeat in Kherson by pointing to a false flag attack on the Kakhovka hydroelectric plant, accusing Ukrainian forces of wanting to bomb it to effectively cover the withdrawal of the Russian army from the right banks of the Dnieper and prevent the advance of Ukrainian troops across the river.