Russia is blocking international aid workers from reaching Ukrainian civilians threatened by the destruction of Kakhovka Dam, according to United Nations officials.
“Operationally, we have boats, personnel, and supplies ready to go,” U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Ukraine Denise Brown said Tuesday. “However, the Russian Federation is yet to provide the safety guarantees we need to cross the front line to the left bank of the Dnipro River, including to Oleshky.”
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Russian forces have controlled Kakhovka Dam, the last in a series of dams along the Dnipro River before it empties into the Black Sea, since the early days of the full-scale campaign to overthrow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government. The June 6 collapse of the dam in southern Ukraine coincided with a reported effect that registered on Norwegian seismic stations and floods tens of thousands of acres in southern Ukraine. More than 21,000 Ukrainian households “remain partially flooded,” according to Russian state media, but the lack of Russian security guarantees remains an obstacle to the U.N. humanitarians.
“These guarantees are necessary for the safety of our team and not to create additional risks for the people we intend to serve,” Brown said, perhaps to imply that her team fears coming under Russian attack if they deploy without the guarantees.
Russian forces have controlled the dam since last year. Ukrainian officials and Western analysts have suggested that they destroyed the dam in order to stymie any Ukrainian counteroffensive through the flooded region. Russian officials maintain that Ukrainian forces attacked the dam, yet Russian authorities decreed a week before the incident that “the technical investigation of ... accidents of hydrotechnical structures, which occurred as a result of military actions, sabotage and terrorist acts, will not be conducted” until 2028, a restriction that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s team touts as a “smoking gun” for Russia’s culpability.
"Of course, coincidences happen. However when the Russian government passes a special decree, about a special regime, on special territories, in case of special accidents on hydro technical objects — it looks suspicious," Zelensky adviser Oleg Ustenko told Newsweek. "It looks like it could be evidence when the decree was signed by the Russian Prime Minister on May 30 and it became effective next day. Then one week later the greatest hydroelectric catastrophe happened in Kherson.”
That disaster portends appalling consequences for Ukrainian civilians and the global food market, according to United Nations officials.
“There are up to 700,000 people without safe drinking water,” United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths told U.N. News. “There are mines which are now floating — it’s one of the most highly mined parts of the world there.”
Griffiths predicted that “the most awful shock” would come from the destruction of Ukrainian farmland.
“It's bound to have an impact on global food prices, because that area is a breadbasket and it's almost certainly going to be destroyed for any near term harvesting,” Griffiths said.
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U.N. officials are coordinating with Ukrainian civilian organizations to rescue and support affected civilians, despite the Russian obstruction.
“The U.N. will continue to deliver life-saving assistance in the areas controlled by Ukraine and make every effort to ensure we can reach all people who have been stranded by the floods and urgently require life-saving assistance, no matter where they are,” Brown said.