War in Ukraine, live: Europeans demand UN investigation into Iranian drones in Ukraine

The Kakhovka hydroelectric power station dam, a key structure for supplying Crimea Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Russians on Thursday evening of having “mined” the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station dam. Located in the occupied region of Kherson (South), it allows, among other things, to supply water to the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014. The dam and the power station were taken by Russian troops from the start of the invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Built on the Dnieper River, and built in 1956, the structure is 16 meters high and 3,850 meters long. It is one of the largest infrastructures of this type in Ukraine. According to the website of the Ukrainian operating company Ukrhydroenergo, the power of the hydroelectric plant is 334.8 megawatts. Upstream of the work is the Kakhovka reservoir, an artificial water reservoir formed on the course of the Dnieper, 240 kilometers long and up to 23 kilometers wide. Kakhovka is about 60 kilometers east as the crow flies of Kherson, the first major city to fall into Russian hands in March. The front is about forty kilometers to the north. If the dam explodes, “more than eighty localities, including Kherson, will find themselves in the zone of rapid flooding”, Mr. Zelensky was alarmed before the Council of the European Union (EU). “It could destroy the water supply for a large part of southern Ukraine” and affect the cooling of the reactors of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, which draws its water from this artificial lake of 18 million cubic meters, has he added. The Russian occupation authorities in Kherson deny, for their part, any mining of the dam, denouncing the “lies” of President Zelensky.