According to preliminary findings released on Friday, it is “highly likely” that the collapse of the Kakhovskaya dam in southern Ukraine was caused by explosives planted by the Russians, a group of experts assisting Ukrainian prosecutors in the investigation said.

Experts from the international human rights law firm Global Rights Compliance, which supports efforts to prosecute those guilty of crimes committed in Ukraine, visited the Kherson region on June 10-11 together with the Prosecutor General of Ukraine and a team of the International Criminal Service. court.

“Conclusion with a degree of reliability of more than 80%”

“Evidence and analysis of available information, which includes seismic sensors and discussions with leading collapse experts, indicate that there is a high probability that the collapse was caused by pre-planted explosives at vital points in the dam’s structure,” it said. a summary of preliminary findings from the law firm’s team seen by Reuters.

Yusuf Syed Khan, a senior lawyer at Global Rights Compliance who participated in the Kherson field mission, said that this conclusion that the dam was blown up by the Russian side with pre-planted explosives “is at least 80% predictable.”

The discovery is based “not only on seismic sensors and one of the leading providers of open-source information, but also on patterns of attacks and other impacts that we have documented,” he said in an interview.

According to him, this refers to previous attacks on critical water infrastructure, including facilities and pipelines.

They rejected the theory that the dam’s catastrophic failure could only have been caused by mismanagement.

Probably a crime against humanity

The collapse of the dam and the impact on the Kakhovka Reservoir and the surrounding area created conditions that investigators believe may have involved the crime of starvation because it targeted “an object essential to the survival of the civilian population,” Khan said.

The attack may be part of a larger crime against humanity, but the group has not yet reached that conclusion.

A deliberate attack on the dam could constitute a war crime under international humanitarian law because it is considered civilian in nature unless there is a valid military objective, said British lawyer Catriona Murdoch, who led the investigation by the mobile justice team.

“Even in the highly unlikely scenario where the dam or even the area nearby is a valid military objective relevant to the destruction of the dam, it still enjoys enhanced protection under international humanitarian law,” she said.

The Russians claim that it is the hand of the Ukrainians

Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of destroying the Kakhovskaya Dam as a tactic of the West to escalate the conflict. Ukraine is investigating the explosion as a war crime and possible criminal environmental destruction, or “ecocide.”

The large Soviet-era Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, which had been under Russian control since the February 2022 invasion, was destroyed in the early morning hours of June 6, causing massive flooding along a stretch of the southern Ukrainian front, destroying farmland and cutting off water supplies to much of the population.

The head of the UN Atomic Energy Agency, Raphael Grossi, who was at the Zaporizhzhia NPP, said that the situation at the site was “serious”, but that the level of cooling water was sufficient after the dam was blown up.

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