During the 16-month conflict in Ukraine, the people in the southern city of Kherson have been invaded by Russia, liberated by Ukraine and must now endure yet another exhausting crisis – flooding after the Nova Kakhovka hydroelectric dam on the Dnipro River was destroyed. Some 80 towns and villages are at risk from rising water levels, and tens of thousands of people will be evacuated.
It is a humanitarian crisis, with hundreds of thousands of people left without drinking water. It might also prove to be the worst ecological disaster since the Chernobyl nuclear plant meltdown in 1986. It could take five years for agriculture to recover in one of Ukraine’s most fertile areas at an estimated cost of £1bn a year.
Despite Russia’s predictable denial of responsibility, most of the free world will assume that this is the latest example of Vladimir Putin’s scorched earth strategy. If winning at any cost includes harming water supplies in Russian-occupied Crimea and floods on the side of the Dinpro that Russia holds, so be it. Rishi Sunak is right to say that, if it is determined that Russia destroyed the dam, it would represent a “new low”. Indeed, it is a huge moment in the conflict.
