Up to 100 people have been trapped in the Russian-controlled town of Novaya Kakhovka, and thousands of wild animals have died after the collapse of the Kakhovka dam in the south. Ukraineits Moscow-appointed mayor said, according to Russian news agencies.

Vladimir Leontiev added that rescue work is underway to free people in flooded areas.

More than 30,000 cubic meters of water are leaking every second from the reservoir that held them back, and the city is at risk of pollution due to floods, TASS reports, citing the mayor’s statement.

The “immense” scale of the disaster

Water levels in parts of the Kherson region under Russian control are expected to remain high for three to 10 days after the disaster, TASS reports.

However, Deputy Head of the General Staff of Ukraine Oleksiy Kuleba said that Kyiv hopes that by the end of today the water level will stop rising, reaching about 5 meters overnight.

Kuleba noted that at the moment 2,000 people have left their homes, and the maximum water level has reached 17 settlements with a total population of 16,000 people.

Russian news agency RIA also reported, citing Moscow-appointed mayor of Novaya Kakhovka Leontyev, that “thousands of animals” in the Nizhnedneprovsky National Nature Park were killed and that the extent of the destruction was “colossal.”

Ukraine and Russia blame each other for destroying a dam that flooded areas in the war zone and forced thousands of people to flee their homes. Some independent experts say the dam may have collapsed due to previous damage and heavy pressure.

More than 2,700 people were evacuated from the flooded areas after the collapse of the dam, both sides said today, the Ukrainian authorities and the Russian occupation forces, each of which controls one bank of the Dnieper River in the region.

“More than 1,450 people have been displaced” from their homes, Oleksandr Horunetsky, a spokesman for Ukraine’s emergency service, told Ukrainian TV channels.

Moscow-appointed authorities, cited by Russian news agencies, said they had evacuated “1,274 people” to date.

Zelensky: Hundreds of thousands of people were left without drinking water

Earlier, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky noted in a message on the Telegram app that the destruction of the hydroelectric dam in Nova Kakhovka left hundreds of thousands of people without constant access to drinking water and stressed that this was done “absolutely on purpose.”

Other officials also said parts of the Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, Mykolaiv and Kherson regions in southern and southeastern Ukraine would be affected by water supply disruptions.

“The highest priority right now is to supply water to the regions affected by the Russian terrorist attack,” Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Oleksandr Kubrakov wrote on Twitter.

The Ukrainian Infrastructure Development and Rehabilitation Service announced that the government had decided to allocate 1.5 billion hryvnias (about 38 million euros) for the construction of a pipeline capable of transporting about 300,000 cubic meters of water per day.

The total length of the new water pipeline will be 87 kilometers, the service reports.

The Ministry of Health of Ukraine also warned of possible health risks due to the presence of chemicals in the water and urged residents to drink only bottled or other safe water and use water from safe sources for cooking.

Agricultural land is under threat

The Ukrainian Ministry of Agriculture has warned that the destruction of the dam will flood thousands of hectares of agricultural land in southern Ukraine and could turn at least 5 million hectares into a “desert” without irrigation.

“The destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station will lead to the fact that the fields in the south of Ukraine may turn into deserts next year,” the ministry said in a statement.

The catastrophe, he also said in a statement yesterday, could deprive water supply of 31 irrigation systems in the Ukrainian regions of Dnipro, Kherson and Zaporozhye.

He noted that before the Russian invasion in 2022, these systems provided irrigation for 5.8 million hectares, from which farmers harvested about 4 million tons of grains and oilseeds.

He stressed that the destruction of the dam left 94% of the irrigation systems of Kherson, 74% of Zaporozhye and 30% of the Dnieper without water.

The ministry also said that, according to preliminary calculations, about 100 thousand hectares of agricultural land on the right bank of the Dnieper in the Kherson region will be flooded, but did not specify how much crop could be lost.

^{Source: APE-MEB, Reuters, AFP.}