Ukraine, alarm at the Zaporizhzhia plant: “The water from the dam is not enough”

Russia is accused by Kiev of bombing the city of Kherson during operations to evacuate the floods caused by the catastrophic collapse of the Kakhovka dam, for which Moscow and Ukraine blame each other. “Right now, Russia is bombing Kherson, which is sinking, and flooding coastal areas, preventing rescue teams from evacuating the population. At the same time, they are not even trying to evacuate the occupied territories. People are sitting on the roofs of buildings without food and water, under the sun and bombings,” denounces Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak. The denunciation takes place on the day that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, visited the flooded areas: first the Kherson region and then Mykolaiv.

“In Kherson, I visited a transit area where people are being evacuated from flooded areas. Our job is to protect lives and help people as much as possible,” Zelensky said, stressing that it was “important to calculate damages and allocate funds to compensate for the residents affected by the disaster”. In Mykolaiv, then, the Ukrainian head of state visited “the main pumping station of the management of the Inhulets river channel, flooded due to the destruction of the Kakhovka dam”. The collapse of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River, in an area Moscow has controlled for more than a year, occurred on Tuesday. Russia has accused Ukraine of bombing the facility, while Ukraine claims Russia blew it up from the inside.

The situation is dramatic: apart from the fact that high tides could wipe out this season’s crops and the depletion of the Kakhovka reservoir would prevent adequate irrigation for years, what is worrisome is the fact that efforts to secure water from cooling for Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Ihor Syrota, director of the company Ukrhydroenergo that manages the collapse of the Kakhova dam, speaking on Ukrainian TV warned that the water level in the basin since Thursday night “is 12.5 meters, that is, below the so-called point dead of 12.7 meters, below which it is impossible to bring water to inhabited areas and to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant”, for pumping cooling water.

According to the Washington Post, which cites Ukrainian officials, Kiev’s long-awaited counter-offensive has begun. Moscow accuses Ukraine of launching an offensive in the occupied Zaporizhzhia region, but says it repelled the attack. According to the Kiev version provided by Deputy Defense Minister Malyar, however, in the Zaporizhzhia region “the enemy is on the defensive in the Orikhove area.”

In this context, the words of former NATO Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen raised alarm, which raised the hypothesis of sending soldiers to Ukraine from some NATO countries if member states do not provide tangible security guarantees in Kiev during the Alliance summit of July in Vilnius. “If NATO cannot agree on a clear path forward for Ukraine, there is a clear possibility that some countries may act individually. We know Poland is very busy providing concrete assistance to Ukraine. And I wouldn’t rule out Poland getting involved. even more in this context at the national level and is followed by the Baltic states, perhaps with the possibility of sending troops into the field”, said Rasmussen. A hypothesis denied by Ukrainian Chancellor Dmytro Kuleba: “Until the end of the armed conflict on the territory of Ukraine, foreign countries will not introduce their troops into the territory of our country”, he assured. While a Moscow source, quoted by Russian news agency RIA Novosti, warned that any deployment of NATO troops in Ukraine would lead to a direct confrontation with Russia.