WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
Ukrainians face homelessness, disease risk as floods crest from burst dam
Ukrainians abandoned inundated homes on Wednesday as floods crested across the south after the destruction of a huge hydroelectric dam on front lines between Russian and Ukrainian forces, with their presidents trading blame for the disaster.
Residents slogged through flooded streets carrying children on their shoulders, dogs in their arms and belongings in plastic bags while rescuers used rubber boats to search areas where the waters reached above head height.
Ukraine said the deluge would leave hundreds of thousands of people without access to drinking water, swamp tens of thousands of hectares of agricultural land and turn at least 500,000 hectares deprived of irrigation into "deserts".
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address that it was impossible to predict how many people would die in Russian-occupied areas due to the flooding, urging a "clear and rapid reaction from the world" to support victims.
"The situation in occupied parts of the Kherson region is absolutely catastrophic. The occupiers are simply abandoning people in frightful conditions. No help, without water, left on the roofs of houses in submerged communities," he said.
Visiting the city of Kherson downstream from the dam, Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said over 80 settlements had been affected by the disaster, and that the flooding had released chemicals and infectious bacteria into the water.
The Nova Kakhovka dam collapse on Tuesday happened as Ukraine prepares a major counteroffensive against Russia's invasion, likely the war's next major phase. Both sides traded blame for continued shelling across the populated flood zone and warned of drifting landmines unearthed by the flooding.
Kyiv said on Wednesday its troops in the east had advanced more than a kilometre around the ruined city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, its most explicit claim of progress since Russia reported the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive earlier this week. Russia said it had fought off the assault.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine's national security council, said assaults under way were still localised, and the full-scale offensive had yet to begin.
"When we start (it), everyone will know about it, they will see it," he told Reuters.
Kyiv said several months ago the dam had been mined by Russian forces that captured it early in their 15-month-old invasion, and has suggested Moscow blew it up to try to prevent Ukrainian forces crossing the Dnipro in their counteroffensive.
Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of destroying the dam at the suggestion of Western supporters, saying it was a "barbaric" war crime that escalated the conflict with Moscow. Putin described the incident as an "environmental and humanitarian catastrophe", according to a Kremlin read-out.
Neither side has presented public evidence demonstrating who was responsible. Some experts say the dam may have collapsed due to earlier war damage and poor Russian management.
'THEY HATE US'
Residents on the Ukrainian-controlled side of the flood zone in the south, a fertile, marshy region stretching to the Dnipro estuary on the Black Sea, blamed the bursting of the dam on Russian troops who held it on the eastern bank of the Dnipro.
"They hate us," said riverside villager Oleksandr Reva. "They want to destroy a Ukrainian nation and Ukraine itself. And they don't care by what means because nothing is sacred for them."
Russia imposed a state of emergency in the areas of Kherson province it controls, where many towns and villages lie in exposed lowlands below the dam.
In the town of Nova Kakhovka next to the dam, brown water submerged main streets largely empty of residents.
Over 30,000 cubic metres of water were gushing out of the dam's reservoir every second and the town was at risk of contamination from the torrent, Russia's TASS news agency quoted the Russian-installed mayor, Vladimir Leontyev, as saying.
Zelenskiy said he was "shocked" at what he called the lack of U.N. and Red Cross aid so far for victims of the disaster.
Shortly afterward, President Emmanuel Macron of France said on Twitter that "within the next few hours we will send aid to meet immediate needs".
The U.N.'s humanitarian affairs office said a team was in Kherson to coordinate relief efforts. Access to drinking water was a major concern and around 12,000 bottles of water and 10,000 purification tablets had been distributed so far.
Ukraine expects the floodwaters will stop rising by the end of Wednesday after reaching around five metres (16.5 feet) overnight, presidential deputy chief Oleksiy Kuleba said.
Two thousand people have been evacuated from the Ukrainian-controlled part of the flood zone and waters had reached their highest level in 17 settlements with a combined 16,000 people.
RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
NATO states may send troops to Ukraine – ex-chief
Former NATO secretary general-turned-Ukrainian presidential adviser, Anders Rasmussen, has claimed that some member states may volunteer to send their soldiers to Ukraine, if the country is not offered security assurances on a wide range of issues at an upcoming summit.
Rasmussen, who has served as an adviser to Ukrainian presidents Vladimir Zelensky and Petro Poroshenko, said Kiev should be given written guarantees before NATO leaders meet in Vilnius, Lithuania next month, including for Western intelligence-sharing, weapons transfers and joint military training.
“If NATO cannot agree on a clear path forward for Ukraine, there is a clear possibility that some countries individually might take action,” he said on Wednesday, according to the Guardian.
I think the Poles would seriously consider going in and assemble a coalition of the willing if Ukraine doesn’t get anything in Vilnius.
After touring Europe and the United States in recent weeks to help gin up military support for Ukraine, Rasmussen argued that foreign troop deployments would be legal under international law if requested by Kiev.
While NATO’s current secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, recently confirmed that some security assurances would be discussed at the summit, he stressed that full guarantees could only be offered to member states. The bloc first pledged to grant Ukraine membership back in 2008, and Kiev formally applied to join last September, but little progress has been made on the issue since.
Several NATO members have become increasingly vocal about Ukraine’s future in the bloc, urging other Western countries to outline a clear path to membership. Earlier this week, sub-grouping of Eastern European NATO states known as the ‘Bucharest Nine’ issued a statement urging the bloc to “launch a new political track that will lead to Ukraine’s membership in NATO” at the Vilnius event, as well as a “more robust, multi–year, and comprehensive support package.”
Though Washington has also repeatedly affirmed that Ukraine will someday join the military collective, it has placed greater focus on the current conflict with Russia, hoping to resolve the issue of membership later on. However, US Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith told the Guardian on Wednesday that officials are now “looking at an array of options to signal that Ukraine is advancing in its relationship with NATO,” though did not specify what that might entail.
Zelensky rejected any “substitute for NATO” and reportedly told Western partners that he would not attend the summit in Lithuania in July unless the bloc offers Ukraine “concrete” guarantees or a roadmap to full membership.
Russia views NATO’s continued eastward expansion as a threat to its security and has cited member states' aid to Ukraine as one of the reasons it launched the military operation in the neighboring state in February 2022. Moscow repeatedly said that Ukraine’s neutrality would be one of key conditions for a lasting peace.
** 'Were you aware?': Russia wants US to answer about how its weapons used in Ukraine
The US authorities must give a concrete answer as to whether or not they know how American weapons are being used on the territory of Ukraine, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a briefing in comments on the attack on the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant.
Against the backdrop of the recent attack on the Kakhovka HPP, she pointed to a statement made last December by Ukrainian General Andrey Kovalchuk in an interview with The Washington Post, in which he said that the Ukrainian army had already conducted a test strike from a US HIMARS system on one of the dam's gates to punch it and see how high the water level of the Dnieper River rises.
"Now, the question for [White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John] Kirby, [White House Press Secretary] Karin Jean-Pierre, all the people who are in charge of communications at the White House. <...> Were you aware of how American weapons, the weapons that are being supplied to Ukraine, are used?" she asked.
"That trial tests of a terrorist attack against civilian infrastructure in third countries are being made? These are the questions that we directly pose in the public space before the White House; you must answer them," she said, adding that the attack on the Kakhovka HPP "is certainly an act of terrorism."
On Tuesday night, Ukrainian forces delivered a strike on the Kakhovka hydropower plant, presumably from an Olkha multiple launch rocket system (MLRS). The shelling destroyed the hydraulic sluice valves at the HPP’s dam, triggering an uncontrolled discharge of water. In Novaya Kakhovka, the water level exceeded 12 meters at one point, but is now receding. There are currently 15 population centers in the flood zone; residents of nearby towns and villages are being evacuated. The collapse of the hydro plant's dam has caused serious environmental damage. Farmlands along the Dnieper River have been washed away, and there is a risk that the North Crimean Canal will become shallow.
Reuters/RT/Tass