A balance that becomes heavier as the days go by. The Ukrainian authorities reviewed this Sunday the increase in human losses caused by the floods after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, with six dead and 35 missing people in the areas under their control.
In the territories occupied by the Russians, officials installed by Moscow have meanwhile reported eight dead and 13 missing this week.
Tuesday’s destruction of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper brought torrential downpours to cities and towns near the river, including the regional capital Kherson, recaptured in November by Ukrainian soldiers.
Kyiv and Moscow accuse each other
Both sides blame each other for this disaster, which affected both banks of the Dnieper, each controlled by one of the belligerents. According to Interior Minister Igor Klymenko, 77 towns were flooded, including 14 in the territories under Russian occupation.
He provided in a message on Telegram a total death toll of six dead and 35 missing, including seven children, in two regions. In areas under Ukrainian control, 3,700 people were evacuated.
In Russian-occupied ones, local authorities say they have evacuated more than 7,000. According to Mr. Klymenko, 162,000 people also find themselves without running water upstream of the destroyed hydroelectric dam.
“The damage is considerable”
In Kherson, AFP reporters found that the water had begun to recede, and the first residents of that city returned home to view the damage, while evacuations continued in other areas.
Owner of a flooded grocery store in the center of this city, Oleksiï Guessine, 60, was able to return there for the first time on Sunday. Wearing rubber boots and in the rain, he shovels debris and dirt brought up by the water.
“The damage is considerable. The store was up to its chest in water, everything below was damaged,” he told AFP. According to an employee of the Kherson meteorological center, Laura Moussian, the water level has locally decreased by 1.7 meters.
The “worst environmental disaster since Chernobyl”
“There could be heavy rain again, which could slow the rate of decline considerably,” he said.
Ukraine’s attorney general, Andriï Kostin, described the destruction of the dam on Sunday as “the worst environmental disaster since Chernobyl (the 1986 accident at the nuclear power plant)” in Ukraine, denouncing “ecocide”.
According to him, at least three cemeteries, oil storage terminals and landfills were flooded. About 450 tons of turbine oil also spilled into the waters of the Dnieper and then into the Black Sea, he added.
Source: BFM TV
