ISTANBUL (dpa-AFX) – After the destruction of the Kachowka Dam, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan proposed an investigative commission. Erdogan said this in separate phone calls with the Kremlin chief on Wednesday Wladimir Putin and the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj, announced the Presidential Office in Ankara.
Such a commission could be staffed with experts from the two warring parties as well as with representatives from Turkey and the United Nations and thus have a similar format to the so-called grain agreement, it said. In July 2022, the United Nations and Turkey brokered an agreement that ended Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian grain.
Zelenskyj wrote on Twitter that he had spoken to Erdogan about the humanitarian and ecological consequences of the “Russian act of terrorism” and had given Turkey a list of urgently needed items.
The dam in the city of Nowa Kakhovka was destroyed on Tuesday night in the Russian-occupied part of the southern Ukrainian region of Cherson. Ukraine and many Western observers are convinced that the Russian occupiers blew up the dam themselves – possibly in order to hinder the planned Ukrainian counter-offensive. The Kremlin, in turn, blamed Kyiv. Russia has been waging a war of aggression against the neighboring country for more than 15 months./jam/DP/jha