The terrorist attack at the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station in Russia caused the destruction of villages and ecosystems, causing irreparable damage to the environment and the local population.
A tragedy that is comparable in scale to Chernobyl: on June 6, Russian occupiers blew up the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station . This act of ecocide resulted in enormous destruction and irreparable damage to the ecosystem and the local population. What is happening in the south of Ukraine six months after the terrorist attack and how did the disaster affect local residents? StopKor made an expedition to the affected villages.
First-hand details are in the video report by journalist Olga Levitskaya .
The destruction of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station dam is a war crime and an act of ecocide committed by the occupying forces of the Russian Federation. The explosion occurred around three in the morning on June 6 this year amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine - experts suggest that, most likely, the reservoir dam in the Kherson region was mined and blown up. About 16 thousand people and almost eight dozen settlements were in the disaster zone.
Before the terrorist attack, the Kakhovka irrigation system was considered the largest in Europe, and the hydroelectric power station supplied electricity and drinking water to the entire southeast of Ukraine. In addition, navigation was carried out along the reservoir from Kherson to Zaporozhye.
“This event had a lot of negative consequences, including damage to forests, destruction of flora and fauna, pollution of water bodies with huge amounts of garbage and animal carcasses, as well as pollution from sewage discharges. All this threatens the environment and, above all, human health. To restore nature, it is necessary to assess the current state of the ecosystem ,” notes the reporter.
That is why the StopCor team, together with environmental activists who had been monitoring the critical situation since the first days of the disaster, went to the south of Ukraine to explore and record the consequences of one of the largest environmental disasters in our country and Europe.
The film crew went to the de-occupied villages of the Nikolaev region to take water samples and test it for the presence of toxic substances after the explosion of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station. To do this, the expedition members took the necessary ammunition to protect themselves in the event of shelling by the Russians.
As Ivan Kukhta , head of the Snigirevsk city military administration, said, thirteen nearby settlements were flooded very significantly. Including 375 houses that went under water. The water has already receded and returned to its channel, but the housing of most people cannot be restored as a result of the disaster.
“Imagine how I left home and had nowhere to come. Every person has a fear for their children, that there is nowhere to return to, nothing to return to, no one knows what will happen next? You understand what I want to say: before a person lived, planned something, but now we have nothing to plan, because we have to live today, because tomorrow you don’t know what will happen. The child is nine years old, and he already knows what it is, and I want to tell you, he really hates Russians, because they took everything from him ,” says Tatyana Shapir , a resident of Snigirevka.
Unfortunately, such stories are not isolated.
Scientists convince: water in which toxic substances were discovered as a result of the explosion of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station is extremely dangerous for human consumption.
“ Since we investigated toxic substances, the presence of these toxic substances indicates that it is dangerous to use this water. At the very least, you definitely shouldn’t swim. And you definitely shouldn’t drink ,” notes the acting director. Director of UkrNTsEM Viktor Komorin .
Experts took samples of water and bottom sediments. The results were shocking: the standards for almost every indicator were exceeded.
“ These are heavy metals. These are organochlorine compounds. Polychlorinated biphenyl. And oil, sometimes hundreds of times higher than the maximum permissible concentrations for some indicators ,” the scientist emphasizes.
None of the researchers can say when exactly the water will become safe. Therefore, we urge everyone to be careful in the territories affected by the explosion of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station. You cannot catch and consume fish, swim or even wash your hands in rivers and reservoirs, and it is much more critical to drink this water without special half-hour treatment.
And we, in turn, will continue to monitor and record all the consequences of war crimes by the Russian Federation.
Let us remind you that video and satellite images of the Kakhovka reservoir after the Russian terrorist attack show a shallowed bottom: journalists and OSINT researchers analyzed what finds it hides and whether the area is suitable for conducting military operations.
