Local residents in the Kherson region continued to struggle with rising floodwaters one day after a critical hydroelectric dam was breached by as-yet-unknown causes.
“Everything is submerged in water: all the furniture, the fridge, food … everything is floating,” one 53-year-old resident of Kherson City, the Ukrainian-held regional capital, told Reuters.
The Nova Kakhovka dam, which spans the Dnipro River, was breached on the morning of June 6, causing widespread flooding and prompting fears of a looming humanitarian and environmental catastrophe.
Local residents look at a partially flooded area of Kherson on June 6, 2023, following the partial destruction of the Kakhovka HPP dam. The loss of the major Russian-held dam in southern Ukraine unleashed a torrent of water that sent people fleeing flooding on the war’s front line. (Stringer/AFP via Getty Images)
Martin Griffiths, the UN’s undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, warned that the breach would have “grave and far-reaching consequences for thousands of people … on both sides of the [Russia-Ukraine] frontline.”…