Kakhovka Dam Breach is Ukrainian Sabotage: Russia

Early Tuesday morning, the Kakhovka dam, which is located in Russian-controlled areas in the Kherson region, was partially destroyed as a result of a Ukrainian attack.

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"This is deliberate sabotage, planned and organized by the Kiev regime," said the Russian Presidency spokesman Dmitri Peskov, who rejected the accusations of Ukraine and NATO, which try to blame the Russians for what happened.

Preliminary reports from the emergency services show that Ukrainian troops fired 37 howitzer shells and two more from the Alder MLRS system at Kherson towns such as Kakhovka and Novaya Kakhovka.

As a result of the sabotage of the dam, the water flooded the city of Novaya Kakhovka and threatens some 80 villages where about 20,000 people live.

The tweet reads, "Satellite image shows the before and after failure of a sector of the Kakhovka dam in the Kherson region in southern Ukraine."

Built in 1956, the Kakhovka dam is a concrete and earth infrastructure that supplies water to the Crimean peninsula, which is why it has strategic importance.

“One of the purposes of this sabotage is to deprive Crimea of water,” Peskov explained, adding that the North Crimean Canal's water supply has already been reduced.

"This distraction is also related to the fact that, having launched a large-scale offensive two days ago, the Ukrainian forces are not achieving their objectives," he commented.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director Rafael Grossi assured that the water level in the cooling tank of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant systems had decreased in a worrying way as a result of the damage to the dam.