Ukrainian troops witnessed Russian soldiers being swept up in flood waters after the collapse of Nova Khakovka dam over Dnipro River, said a Ukrainian armed forces official. The official said that many Russian troops were killed or wounded in the chaos. “No one on the Russian side was able to get away,” said Captain Andrei Pidlisnyi told CNN. “All the regiments the Russians had on that side were flooded,” he said after the dam collapsed in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
Pidlisnyi believed that the Russians had deliberately attacked the dam to disrupt Ukrainian forces’ plans for an upcoming offensive while the Kremlin has said it was Kyiv’s forces that carried out an attack.
“Around 3 a.m., the enemy blew up the Kakhovka Hydro Power Plant in order to raise the water level to flood the approaches and the left bank of the Dnipro River, as well as the settlements located there. And to make it impossible for the Ukrainian armed forces to advance in the future," he claimed, as per the report.
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According to Pidlisnyi, the lay of the land around the river meant that Russia’s military — located on the east bank — suffered serious impacts in the dam’s breach.
His unit watched the events unfold through the use of drones and troops on the scene.
“The left [east] bank is lower than the right bank, so it is more flooded. The enemy’s positions right on the riverbank were also flooded. You need to understand that the enemy's positions are not only trenches but also ordinary civilian houses where they lived," Pidlisnyi said.
Zelenskyy described the situation as an “environmental bomb of mass destruction” and said Russia bears “criminal liability” and Ukrainian prosecutors were investigating the dam incident as a case of “ecocide.”