On Tuesday, millions of gallons of water broke through a large hole in a Russian-controlled dam, flooding a swathe of the combat zone in southern Ukraine, endangering scores of communities, and cutting off the water supply.

Ukraine and Russia blamed each other for the breach.

The Nova Kakhovka dam, which holds as much water as Utah’s Great Salt Lake, delivers water to Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, acquired by Russia in 2014, and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear reactor, both under Russian control.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, tweeted that “no immediate nuclear safety risk at (the) plant” in southern Ukraine was being monitored.

However, Ukraine’s national atomic power agency Energoatom stated the Kakhovka Reservoir was fast falling, creating an “additional threat” to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
The Moscow-appointed leader of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region told RIA that 22,000 people in 14 communities are at risk of floods. Moscow claims annexed five territories, including Kherson.

Unverified social media images showed water flowing through the dam’s ruins, shocking passersby. The water rose meters in hours.

On Tuesday, a Russian-appointed official in Nova Kakhovka told TASS that inhabitants of 300 residences had been evacuated. He predicted the dam could not be repaired.

The dam breach occurred as Ukraine prepared to launch its long-awaited counter-offensive to retake land gained by Russian forces over the past 15 months.
Russia says it stopped another Ukrainian advance in eastern Donetsk and suffered serious losses. It also bombed Kyiv again overnight. Ukraine reported shooting down over 20 cruise missiles approaching the capital.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports, and it was unclear if the fresh fighting signified Ukraine’s long-anticipated counter-offensive.

According to Ukraine’s Southern Command, Russian forces blew up the 30-meter-tall, 3.2-kilometer-long Nova Kakhovka dam. Built on the Dnipro in 1956.

“The scale of destruction, the speed and volumes of water, and the likely areas of inundation are being clarified,” the Ukrainian military wrote on Facebook.

Ukraine’s military intelligence service later announced on Telegram that Russian forces blew up the dam “in a panic” in “an obvious act of terrorism and a war crime, which will be evidence in an international tribunal.”
Russian news outlets said that shelling destroyed the dam, while the mayor of Russia-controlled Nova Kahhovka city blamed terrorism—a Russian euphemism for a Ukrainian strike.

The Russian-appointed Kherson region head said evacuation near the dam had begun, and water would reach critical levels within five hours.

After an engine room explosion, Ukraine’s state hydroelectric company declared the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant “totally destroyed” and unrecoverable.

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, tweeted Tuesday that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will attend an emergency meeting regarding the dam blast.

On Feb. 24, 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in what the Kremlin thought to be a quick operation, but they were defeated and regrouped in the east.

Thousands of Russian troops besieged Bakhmut for months, anticipating a Ukrainian counter-attack to break Russia’s land bridge to the Crimean Peninsula.

In his nighttime address on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy enigmatically praised “the news we have been waiting for” and forward steps in Bakhmut, Donetsk.

Russia claims it stopped a massive Ukrainian onslaught in the Donetsk region over the weekend and a new one on Tuesday.

It stated that Russian forces destroyed 28 tanks, including eight Leopard main battle tanks and 109 armored vehicles, and caused heavy casualties for Ukrainian forces. 1,500 Ukrainian forces died.

Kyiv didn’t respond to Russia’s claims. Instead, Instead, Russia and Ukraine have made unsubstantiated accusations of inflicting massive human losses on one other.

On Telegram, Wagner militia leader Yevgeny Prigozhin called Moscow’s allegations of massive Ukrainian losses “simply wild and absurd science fiction.”

The Washington Post claimed that some U.S. officials believed Ukraine’s counter-offensive was started, but White House national security spokesperson John Kirby would not confirm this.

“I’m not going to be talking for the Ukrainian military,” he told a briefing, adding that the U.S. had done “everything we could… to make sure that they had all the equipment, the training, the capabilities to be successful.”

A counter-offensive with billions of dollars of Western hardware may affect future Western diplomatic and military assistance for Ukraine.

On Monday evening, Ukraine’s General Staff did not indicate any large-scale attack or shift in the speed or extent of battle along front lines that have not changed for months.