The Ukrainian government estimates the environmental damage caused by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper River at 1.5 billion dollars (1.4 billion euros), Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said in London on Wednesday.
“Preliminary estimates of environmental damage point to around US$1.5 billion. This figure does not include damage to agriculture, infrastructure, housing, and reconstruction costs,” he said.
Moscow and Kiev blame each other for the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine in early June which led to the flooding of 10,000 hectares of land, around 50 deaths and thousands of homeless people.
On Thursday, the Ukrainian Environment Minister, Ruslan Striles, had referred during a videoconference intervention to the European Environment Ministers meeting in Luxembourg an estimate of 1,200 million euros of damage.
In addition to the fact that a million people were left without drinking water, “it caused 20,000 animals in the north, including endemic species that only live in the south of Ukraine”, something that “cannot be calculated in monetary terms”, he stressed.
The Ukrainian Prime Minister was speaking at a press conference during the International Conference on the Recovery of Ukraine (URC 2023), which takes place in the British capital between Wednesday and Thursday.
According to the World Bank, Ukraine needs US$14.1 billion for critical and priority reconstruction over the next 12 months and at least US$411 billion for long-term reconstruction.
“Every day Russia inflicts new damage on Ukraine, and unfortunately this number will increase,” Shmyhal lamented.
Source: TSF
