Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan proposed on Wednesday to Ukrainian and Russian Presidents Volodymyr Zelenskyi and Vladimir Putin, respectively, to create an international commission of inquiry to find out all aspects of the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in the south of the country. Ukraine, reports France Presse.

During a telephone conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, “President Erdoğan stated that a commission may be created with the participation of experts from the opposing parties, the UN and the international community, including Turkey,” the Turkish presidency reported on Wednesday. This is stated in a press release, reports AFP and Agerpres.

This commission could conduct an “in-depth investigation into the destruction of the Kakhovskaya Dam,” Ankara said.

On Wednesday, Volodymyr Zelenskyi emphasized that in his conversation with Erdogan, he touched on the “humanitarian and ecological consequences” of the floods caused in the south of Ukraine due to the destruction of the Kakhovskaya dam.

“We discussed the humanitarian and environmental consequences of the Russian terrorist attack on the Kakhovskaya HPP, including the risks to the Zaporizhzhya NPP,” Zelenskyi said on Twitter, adding that during this phone conversation he presented his Turkish colleague with “a list of urgent needs to confront the disaster.”

In his first reaction after the destruction of the dam in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin blames Kyiv

Erdogan, who later had a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, hopes that this investigation will “remove all suspicions,” the Turkish president said in a separate statement.

During a telephone conversation with his Turkish colleague, Putin condemned the destruction of the Kakhovskaya dam in the Russian-occupied territory of the Kherson region, calling it a “barbaric act” on the part of Kyiv, the Kremlin said in a statement.

“The barbaric act aimed at destroying the Kakhovskaya HPP in the Kherson region led to a large-scale environmental and humanitarian disaster,” Putin said, the same statement said.

The battlefield and entire cities were flooded after a huge dam was blown up

Moscow and Kyiv shared responsibility for the attack on a dam that supplied water to Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014 and was a potential route for Ukrainian troops to retake the occupied territories.

The collapse of the dam sent water into the Dnipro River, forcing thousands of civilians to flee flooded areas and raising fears of an environmental disaster.

Turkey, a NATO member, has managed to maintain good relations with both Kyiv and Moscow since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

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