Vladamir Putin’s deranged plot to blow up a dam in Ukraine would unleash an 18million-ton wall of water and flood 80 towns and villages, it is feared. President Zelensky warned it would spark a “catastrophe on a grand scale” endangering hundreds of thousands of people downstream including in occupied Kherson city.
Ukraine says it has information Russian troops have mined the Kakhovka hydroelectric plant and are planning to blow it up as they retreat. The dam – 100ft high and two miles long – holds back a reservoir with the same volume as Utah’s Great Salt Lake.
Computer map models show the devastating impact of a breach on dozens of settlements along the Dnipro valley. Huge areas on both banks would be totally flooded and parts of Kherson city would be underwater.
Zelensky said: “Destroying the dam would mean a large-scale disaster. “If Russian terrorists blow up this dam, more than 80 settlements, including Kherson, will be in the zone of rapid flooding. “Hundreds of thousands of people could be affected.” It would also destroy the water supply to much of southern Ukraine – including cutting off most of Crimea’s water, Zelensky warned.
And emptying the reservoir could leave the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant without water for cooling, creating the potential for a Chornobyl-style disaster. Putin’s ruthless new war chief Sergey Surovikin – known as General Armageddon – is said to have ordered the sabotage after being forced into a humiliating retreat.
A Ukrainian counter-offensive last month smashed through Russian lines on the right bank of the Dnipro and they are closing in on Kherson – symbolic as the first city to fall after the invasion. The dam carries the only remaining road and rail bridge across the river after others were destroyed.
Russia has begun pulling its officials out of the city and also ordered the evacuation of 60,000 residents – which was condemned as “forced deportation”. Kirill Stremousov, the Kremlin’s puppet leader in Kherson, denied the dam has been mined. (SOURCE)
