Several international media have confirmed that this is a movement associated with the “counter-attack” so announced by Ukraine. The war in Ukraine has escalated in recent weeks and attacks are getting tougher. Some analysts have reported that Russia was probably expecting the attack from Ukraine from the Dnieper Delta, where some Ukrainian troops have been receiving navy training in the UK, which would make it easier to attack Krimea, Donets or Zaporizhia. According to this, Russia has made progress.

The midnight attack on Monday was particularly significant, as the Kakhova dam, 30 kilometres from the city of Kherson, collects 18 cubic kilometres of water, which is essential to supply the area. It collects the waters of the large river Dnieper, with a depth of 30 meters. To Crimea, to the peninsula annexed to Russia in 2014, where water is channeled, essential for the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant and for the hydroelectric power of the Kakhova dam, among others.

The structure has been attacked and exploded and the environment submerges. The governor of the Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, has warned that there are at least 16,000 people in the “most critical area” facing the river controlled by Ukraine. It claims that 300 homes have already been evacuated and will affect 80 municipalities and 20,000 inhabitants, according to the first estimates. According to the mayor of Kakhovka Berri, Vladimir Leontiev, it is expected that within 72 hours the water level will drop to normal volume, which has risen by five meters.

Strategic urgency

It is not the first time that the Kakhova dam is in conflict in the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski warned in November that Russia was planning the destruction of the structure, which would lead to a “terrible disaster” for people living next to the river. The Military Intelligence representatives put the dangers on the table: It would affect the inhabitants of the areas occupied by Russia, it would be a equilium and it would be an ecological disaster that would reach beyond Ukraine to the Black Sea, as The Guardian recalls.

Ukraine accuses Russia of exploding the prey “with a clear objective”: “Try to put insurmountable obstacles on the way to halt the advance of the [Ukrainian Army] and the just end of the war.”

Russia denies it. Initially, the Russian authorities of Kakhvoka Berri have denied that nothing has happened to him in a hurry, and then they have accused the state of the dam’s structure of disaster, saying that it was weak and that it has been broken with water pressure.

Zelenski convenes an emergency meeting on Tuesday. He described the explosion as a terrorist attack and stressed that attacks on civilian structures are war crimes.