On June 6, 2023, a series of powerful explosions destroyed the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant in southern Ukraine, one of the largest in Europe. In eight hours, more than 80 towns on both banks of the Dnipro River were flooded, trapping more than 100,000 people. The water rose between 5 and 10 meters.
That night, Maksym Razhaniaievemployee of the City Council Kherson, woke up several times. During the two years of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she had grown accustomed to explosions, but that night she seemed unusually calm. At dawn on June 6, 2023, she was finally woken up by a call from work. Maksym received news that she refused to believe: the hydroelectric power plant in Kakhovkatogether with preythey had been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of tons of water rushed into cities and towns in two administrative regions of Ukraine: Kherson and Mykolaiv.
Maksym went on social media and saw photos of the settlements located near the dam, which were already flooded. People were sitting on the roofs of houses to save their lives.
From Kherson to the dam there are 90 kilometers. Maksym calculated that he had five hours before the water flooded the city. She woke up his elderly parents, took his documents and took them to the other side of Kherson, away from the river. She made several such trips in the morning, picking up neighbors in his small car. Around noon, the street where Maksym lived was under water. He joined a group of rescuers in boats and continued evacuating people and animals. The evacuation lasted several days. During the next two weeks, Maksym was pulling the bodies out of the water. He is one of the witnesses to the Ukraine tragedy whose testimony was documented by US war crimes investigators. The Reckoning Project.
Despite the mass evacuation on the right (west) bank of the Dnipro, where it is located Kherson and which is controlled by the Ukrainian army, 35 people died thereaccording to the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine.
The death toll on the left (east) bank of the Dnipro, controlled by the Russian military since the first day of the total invasion, is unknown. The occupation authorities reported 53 dead. However, this figure may be higher, since the occupied shore is located in a low area and was more flooded. Ukrainian journalists contacted residents of the Left Bank by telephone, and people said that the occupation authorities and the Russian military had abandoned them to their fate. Ukrainian border guards launched drones to the left bank of the river and dropped drinking water and food on people’s roofs.
“There was an unbearable stench in the flooded streets”, Maksym recalls. “I had to work with a gas mask.” The water stank because it was a mixture of household garbage, furniture, dirt, and tons of soil from the bottom of the Kakhovka reservoir, where everything had been rotting for decades. The city’s sewers were flooded, with sewage, dead animals and fish floating in the water. Maksym had to remove everything from the water to avoid an outbreak of infections.
“For eight months, Kherson was under the occupation of the Russian military. I lived in the city during that time because my wife gave birth to a son and we couldn’t leave,” he says. “When the Ukrainian military liberated Kherson in November 2022, I thought that nothing worse than the occupation could happen to us. But then they started bombing us daily and destroyed the dam.”
According to the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine and a report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), More than 80 towns in Ukraine, where 100,000 people live, were in the environmental disaster zone. The water rose between 5 and 10 meters, flooding nature reserves, forests, cereal fields, chemical plants and cemeteries. The rapid flow of water desalinated the Black Sea.
In Khersonhe water remained stagnant for three weeks and, when it calmed down, traces of oil remained in the buildings. Even a year after the flood, the oil stains They remain visible on the ground after each rain.
The reservoir of Kakhovka was used to supply drinking water to five regions of Ukraine. Even a year after the tragedy, residents of cities that used to get their water from the Kakhovka reservoir, such as Nikopol and Marhanets, continue to receive water in barrels. Locals still have to collect it in bottles. Each person has a few liters a day for household needs. The Farmers’ fields and heavy industry have no water supply. The bottom of the Kakhovka reservoir is overgrown with trees and plants, including ragweed, dangerous for humans.
After the floods, Maksym started working at the Kherson Environmental Inspectorate to study the impact of war on the environment. Since then, he and his colleagues travel every day to the bombing sites, working with bulletproof vests.
Kherson It is between three and five kilometers from Russian positions on the other side of the Dnipro River. Maksym says that he hears some 20 explosions a day in the city.
The streets are empty even during the day. Most residents have left, and those who remain are hiding from the shelling. Maksym’s colleague from the Environmental Inspectorate, Oleh Kaydashov, has been living in the basement of a house with his wife for a year. And these are not all the problems that have happened to the family. Kherson was under Russian occupation for almost eight months. Oleh’s children were then tortured. Following the liberation of Kherson in November 2022, his apartment was destroyed by a shell and his dacha was flooded. As an inspector of the Kherson environmental service, Oleh took soil samples that the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office included in the investigation into the destruction of the Kakhovka dam.
Prosecutors opened criminal proceedings in the first hours of the tragedy. International humanitarian law firmly protects the safety of dams, dams and nuclear power plants. Destroying a dam is considered a war crime. On the other hand, Ukrainian prosecutors are investigating ecocide, since it is impossible to restore the environment that existed in the region before the catastrophe.
The investigation faces many difficulties, according to Maksym Popov, advisor to the Prosecutor General of Ukraine on environmental issues. The zone where the dam was located and part of the spill occurred still busy. Environmentalists, in the spotlight. Few countries in the world have investigated the destruction of a dam during a war. Therefore, it is not easy to adopt the experience.
According to a report by Truth Houndsan organization that documents war crimes, The Russian military took control of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station on February 24, 2022. They controlled the territory both at the time of the tragedy and today. A week before the explosion at the hydroelectric plant, the Russian government allowed accidents in hydraulic structures “that occurred as a result of hostilities, sabotage and terrorist acts” not to be investigated. Around the same time as the Kakhovka dam was destroyed, Russian military blew up two more small dams in Donetsk Oblastflooding villages, says Popov.
“Dams were also destroyed during other wars, but they were not as large, and these crimes were not investigated. Ukraine is the first country to dedicate resources to this. Thanks to this, the debate on crimes against the environment has intensified in the world,” he says. Maksym Popov.
The European Union has adopted a directive on the protection of the environment through criminal law, Belgium has added the crime of ecocide to its penal code and the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute is debating the inclusion of ecocide in international crimes.
“The war in Ukraine may seem far away to people in other countries, but it is not. “The Kakhovka Dam tragedy is already changing the world.”
Trials over the Kakhovka dam tragedy can last for years, admits the Prosecutor General’s Office. It will not be a single trial. Little by little they will sit in the dock those who gave the order to blow it up, those who blew it up and those who planned the operation, aware of the environmental consequences, says Popov. The trials will take place in Ukrainian courts, but can also be held in courts of other countries under the principle of universal jurisdiction.
Ukraine also has a trial in International Criminal Courtwhere liability for causing excessive environmental damage is listed among war crimes.
This material was prepared as part of “The Reckoning Project: Ukraine testifies” – an initiative of international and Ukrainian reporters, analysts and lawyers to document war crimes and write stories about them that become historical documents of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
