Russia accuses Ukraine of destroying it with a missile strike.Ī drone flown Wednesday by an AP team over the dam’s wreckage revealed none of the scorch marks or shrapnel scars typical of a bombardment. Ukraine says Russia destroyed the dam with explosives. The floods ruined crops, displaced land mines, caused widespread environmental damage, and set the stage for long-term electricity shortages. Many of the survivors are homeless, and tens of thousands are without drinking water. Oleshky’s Ukrainian mayor, Yevhen Ryshchuk, said corpses were floating to the surface. Officials on both sides indicated that about 20 people were known to have died, but the figures could not be independently verified. But the true scale of the disaster remains unclear for a region that was once home to tens of thousands of people. Officials say more than 6,000 people have been evacuated from dozens of inundated cities, towns and villages on both sides of the river. The latest disaster began Tuesday, when the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, roughly 80 kilometers (50 miles) upstream from Oleshky, collapsed, sending torrents of water down the Dnieper River and across the war’s front lines. This region has suffered terribly since Russia invaded Ukraine early last year, enduring sometimes-relentless artillery and missile attacks. Russian President Vladimir Putin “has no plans at the current moment” to visit affected Moscow-occupied areas, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists. On Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to the area to assess the damage. Authorities there have aggressively evacuated civilians and brought in emergency supplies. It’s a sharp contrast to Ukrainian-controlled territory flooded by the dam collapse. The AP could not independently verify reports of boat seizures or that only Russians were being evacuated, but the account is in line with reporting by independent Russian media. Her grandmother, aunt and more than a dozen other people are taking shelter in the attic of a two-story house.ĭetails of life in Russian-occupied Ukraine are often unclear. “My relatives said that Russian soldiers were coming up to the house today by boat, but they said they would only take those with Russian passports,” she told The Associated Press. Viktoria Mironova-Baka said she has been in touch from Germany with relatives stuck in the flooded region. Others have been turned away from rescue. One woman with her, a neighbor’s grandmother, could not move on her own. “There is still no help.” Her grandfather, who had suffered a stroke, was running out of medicine, she said. “Everything around us is flooded,” she said. “We are afraid that no one will know about our deaths,” she said in a brief cellphone interview, her voice trembling. The battery on But’s cellphone is dying.ĬAPTION CORRECTS LOCATION - Houses are seen underwater in the flooded village of Dnipryany, in Russian-occupied Ukraine, Wednesday, June 7, 2023, after the collapse of Kakhovka Dam. The group in the attic have no electricity, no running water, no food. About two-thirds of the flooded areas are in territory occupied by Russia, officials said. So 19-year-old Yektarina But and the three elderly people with her simply wait, along with thousands of others believed to be trapped by floodwaters spread across 600 square kilometers (230 square miles) of the Kherson region. “They are afraid of saboteurs, they suspect everyone.” “Russian soldiers are standing at the checkpoints, preventing (rescuers) from approaching the most-affected areas and taking away the boats,” said one volunteer, Yaroslav Vasiliev. Some say the soldiers will only help people with Russian passports. Russian forces are taking rescuers’ boats, they say. KYIV, Ukraine (AP) - For days, the Ukrainian teenager has waited in the attic, just down the street from the cemetery of her flooded town, marking time with her 83-year-old grandfather and two other elderly people and hoping for help to escape the deluge of a catastrophic dam collapse.īut help is slow in coming to Oleshky, a Russian-occupied town across the Dnieper River from the city of Kherson with a prewar population of 24,000, according to those stranded and their desperate Ukrainian rescuers.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |