Ukraine dam collapse leaves Black Sea awash with trash and dead animals

“A large number of mines, ammunition and other explosives are being swept out to sea and washed ashore,” the Ukrainian Interior Ministry said on its website over the weekend, according to CNN. Border guards have also observed a disaster involving dead fish in the area, the ministry said.

The June 6 collapse of a hydroelectric dam in southern Ukraine was one of the biggest industrial and ecological disasters in Europe in decades. The disaster destroyed entire villages, flooded farmland, left tens of thousands of people without electricity and running water, and caused massive environmental damage.

In a Telegram post on June 11, the head of the regional military administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, said a total of 2,699 people, including 178 children, had been evacuated from threatened settlements in the Kherson region since the dam burst. Authorities have banned swimming and fishing in the area and advised residents to drink only bottled water or water brought in from outside.

“The concentration of toxic substances in water samples is 10 times higher than permissible standards,” said Mr. Prokudin.

Earlier, on June 9, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that hundreds of thousands of people were facing a shortage of clean water in flooded areas after the Nova Kakhovka dam burst. Meanwhile, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin affirmed on the same day that the water reserves of the Crimean Peninsula were not affected by the Kakhovka dam burst. According to him, Crimea's reservoirs were full and the peninsula had enough water reserves for 500 days.

Meanwhile, the area of ​​flooded areas in the Kherson region has almost halved and the average water level has dropped by 27 cm, to 4.45 meters. However, 32 residential areas on the western bank of the Dnipro River remain flooded and 3,784 residential buildings are under water. Mr. Prokudin also described the situation on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River as critical, with 14 residential areas flooded.

The impact of the dam collapse was felt beyond the Kherson region. In addition to the Black Sea coast, in the Dnipropetrovsk region, the communities of Marhanets, Nikopol, Pokrovsk and Hrushivka were partially without water, according to the website of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs on June 11. A section of railway track was destroyed near Nikopol. In Mykolaiv, the road to the village of Afanasivka, which has a population of 379, was completely cut off.

Nearly a week after the Nova Kakhovka dam collapse, Russia and Ukraine are still blaming each other for causing the incident.

On June 11, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said that Russian forces blew up the Nova Khakhovka dam to prevent Ukrainian troops from advancing to the southern Kherson region. Ukraine’s internal security agency also said it had detected a phone call proving that Russian forces blew up the Nova Kakhovka hydroelectric plant and dam. On its Telegram page, Ukraine’s internal security agency posted a 1.5-minute audio recording, which it said was a conversation about Russia destroying the Nova Kakhovka dam.

For its part, on June 8, Russia accused Ukraine at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of destroying the Nova Kakhovka dam, rejecting Ukraine's accusations that Russia was responsible for these actions. Speaking at the ICJ in The Hague, Russian diplomat Alexander Shulgin said: "The Kiev authorities not only carried out large-scale shelling of the Nova Kakhovka dam on the night of June 6, but also deliberately raised the water level of the Kakhovka reservoir to dangerous levels."

According to News