Kiev, June 7, (dpa/GNA) – As tens of thousands of people are being evacuated and rescued following the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine, authorities warn of the impact on global hunger and the environment.
Officials predict water levels in the Kherson region, will continue to rise by another metre by Thursday.
The spread of diseases as well as mass fish die-offs that could produce botulism is worrying the Ukrainian Health Ministry, following the destruction of the Kakhovka dam.
The ministry, in a Facebook post on Wednesday, said chemicals and pathogens could enter wells and bodies of water in the flooded regions, as a result of flooding.
Experts from the ministry are already on the ground analyzing water samples, it added.
Meanwhile, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) has warned of negative consequences for hunger worldwide following the destruction of the Kakhovka dam.
“The massive flooding is destroying newly planted grain and with it hope for 345 million hungry people around the world for whom grain from Ukraine is a lifesaver,” the head of the WFP’s Berlin office, Martin Frick, told dpa on Wednesday.
Following the dam’s destruction on Tuesday, Ukraine’s agriculture ministry expects some 10,000 hectares of agricultural land on the northern bank of the Dnipro in the Kherson region to be flooded, according to initial estimates.
On the southern bank, in the Russian-occupied region, many times this area will be flooded, the ministry announced on its website on Tuesday evening.
Ukrainian and Russian media showed flooded houses and villages. People were wading in the water to safety. Rescue workers carried elderly people who could not walk to dry land. Thousands lost their belongings in the war-torn region.
The environmental organization Greenpeace has also warned of enormous environmental damage and a threat to nuclear safety from the destruction of the dam.
“Due to the scale of the disaster […] there will be inevitable impacts on the water supply for millions of people and agriculture during the coming summer months and beyond,” Greenpeace said in Hamburg on Wednesday.
“Major environmental threats include toxic and other pollutants, severe damage to fragile ecosystems, national parks and the Black Sea Biosphere reserve.”
Greenpeace nuclear expert Shaun Burnie also expressed alarm over possible consequences for the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant occupied by Russian troops.
If the water level of the reservoir sinks too much, the nuclear power plant’s own cooling pool can no longer be refilled directly, but only with pumps from other sources, he said.
“It is now inevitable that the destruction of the dam will impact the safety of the plant in the coming period,” he said.
British officials said the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant further upstream is not likely to be immediately affected, according to the Ministry of Defence’s daily Twitter report on the war.
“The dam’s structure is likely to deteriorate further over the next few days, causing additional flooding,” the ministry said in its daily Twitter report on the war in Ukraine.
But it said the nuclear power plant, which is 120 kilometres from the dam, is “highly unlikely to face immediate additional safety issues as a result of the dropping water levels in the reservoir.”
Russia and Ukraine blame each other for the dam’s destruction. Both sides speak of a “terrorist attack” and an unprecedented disaster for the environment.
Russia has gained a military advantage from the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, said Vladimir Saldo, the head of the Russian occupation in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson.
“From a military point of view, the tactical operation situation has developed in favour of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation,” Saldo told Russian state television on Wednesday.
Due to the devastating floods that the dam’s breach triggered in the region, Ukraine will not be able to launch its counteroffensive, he said.
Kiev, however, has said it does not see its counteroffensive in danger.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, on a visit to the United States, said British intelligence is assessing what happened and it is too soon to say who is responsible for the explosion.
According to Russian information, up to 40,000 people in the Russian-occupied part of the Kherson region are affected by the dam breach.
Ukraine had previously reported that some 17,000 people were evacuated from their homes on the right bank of the Dnipro River, which had been liberated by its troops.
GNA