For its inhabitants Peninsulaliberated from Russian occupation in November, there will be one to blame if their city is threatened by water: Russia.

Since this morning, an alarm has been raised in the areas adjacent to the Dnieper after the explosion of a huge hydroelectric dam in Novaya Kakhovka.

Moscow and Kiev accuse each other of blowing up a regional hydroelectric power plant that was used to supply water to the region and annexed Crimea to the south, as well as to cool the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, which is also under occupation.

“A good Russian is a dead Russian,” Viktor, a resident of Kherson in southern Ukraine, told AFP.

“The flood is before our eyes. Nobody knows what will happen next. A good Russian is a dead Russian, I can’t say anything else,” Viktor says.

Kyiv: Russians seek to stop counterattack

He lives in an area on the banks of the Kokheva, a tributary of the Dnieper, where the water level has risen by two to three meters, according to local residents interviewed by AFP. Warehouses and garages are flooded here. Water begins to reach the streets.

Lyudmila loaded her washing machine and some personal belongings onto a trailer to take them to a higher mountain area. She also expresses her hatred for the Russian soldiers who occupy the opposite bank of the Dnieper and regularly bombard Kherson and surrounding areas since they were forced to withdraw in November due to Ukrainian attacks.

The Russian military blew up the dam to try to “stop” an impending counteroffensive that the Ukrainian military had been preparing for months to recapture all Russian-held territory in southern and eastern Ukraine, Kiev said.

“These orcs must move faster, we must hunt them down! This is not life! Here they are shooting, and there they are flooding!” Lyudmila bursts out, while shooting is heard.

Another resident of the district, Sergey, fears that the entire microdistrict will be flooded with water, although it is the coastal structures that have suffered so far.

“Everything will die here, animals, birds, everything,” he says.

^{Source: APE-MEB, AFP.}