Zelensky warns of ‘historic disaster’: ‘Russians want to blow up dam, hundreds of thousands of lives are at risk’ | War Ukraine and Russia

It would be the dam of Kachovka. “According to our information, explosives were placed at the dam of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant by Russian terrorists,” Zelensky said in his daily video message on Thursday evening.

“In the event of the destruction of the dam (…) the North Crimean Canal will simply disappear,” the Ukrainian president warns. A “historic disaster is imminent”, he says. After all, the dam holds a huge water reservoir and if it were blown up, the city of Kherson and 80 other villages would be flooded. Hundreds of thousands of people could become victims, Zelensky fears.

The Kachovka Dam is located on the Dnipro River in the Kherson region, which is currently controlled by Russian forces. Sergei Surovikin, the new commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine, had already announced such an attack on Wednesday, exactly what Zelensky fears – albeit with the accusation that Ukraine would like to blow up the dam itself.

According to the American think tank ‘Institute for the Study of War’ (ISW), the Russian commander is paving the way for a so-called false flag-Operation: Russia wants to blow up the dam itself and then put the blame on Ukraine.

This plan is also suspected by Zelensky: “We know that this area is controlled by the occupiers and what they were already capable of. Russia is doing this to stage a false flag operation – to carry out a terrorist attack and blame Ukraine for it.”

An explosion from the hydroelectric dam’s dam could cut off water supply to much of southern Ukraine and potentially put the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant without cooling, Bild reports.

Russia’s goal: Floods should disguise Russia’s retreat in the Kherson region and mask a humiliating defeat (after Kiev and Kharkiv) of Putin’s army. In addition, Russian propaganda could use the disaster to brand Ukraine even more as a terrorist state – thus justifying its own atrocities.

Moreover, Russia is trying to bleed those areas as much as possible. The “evacuations” or forced relocations of civilians from Kherson also point to this, the ISW believes.

By attacking Ukrainian power plants, Russia also wants to trigger a mass exodus of Ukrainians to the EU, Zelensky suspects. “Russia is provoking a new Ukrainian migration wave to the EU countries.”

Russia has been continuously attacking Ukrainian infrastructure for the past two weeks. The Russian army is deliberately attacking the Ukrainian energy grid to break the resistance: in a week, a third of all power plants have been destroyed. Electricity supply has been cut in some parts of the country, Zelensky also announced planned blackouts to reduce the load on the grid.

Ukrainian utility Ukrenerho announced Thursday evening that it expected temporary power cuts across the country on Friday as a result of the damaged facilities. The company had to cut the power on Thursday.

Zelensky has accused the Russian military of turning his country’s energy infrastructure into a “battlefield”. “The Russian leadership has given orders to turn the energy grid itself into a battlefield,” the Ukrainian president said in a speech to the European Council on Thursday.

Oleksiy Arestovych, Zelensky’s adviser, does not rule out major long-term problems. “It is entirely possible that we will be without water, without light and heat, or with severe limitations for weeks or even months.” But he says he is sure that the Ukrainians will overcome the problems.

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