Ann-Dorit Boy, Alexander Chernyshev, Christina Hebel, Oliver Imhof, Katja Lutska, Thore Schröder, Alexander Sarovic und Fedir Petrov
The village of Osokorivka lies on the right bank of the Dnieper River, the side under Ukrainian control, around 90 kilometers (56 miles) northeast of the Kakhovka Dam. The people here live with and from the water stored in the gigantic, Soviet-era Kakhovka Reservoir. They refer to it reverently as their "sea." Osokorivka Mayor Serhii Kunez, a stoic 58-year-old, is fond of talking about how he would catch crabs in the lake as a youth.
Kunez didn’t really have an explanation for the historically low water levels at the beginning of the year, but figured the dam had been damaged by artillery strikes. Few came to the conclusion that the Russians, who have controlled the dam and its power plant since early on in the war, might have been intentionally releasing water. Or that they weren’t regulating the reservoir at all – perhaps because they had no idea how to.
Bild vergrößernA satellite image from Tuesday showing water gushing through the breach in the Kakhovka Dam Foto:
Planet Labs PBC / AP
This spring, the level then began rising, as it does every year. But this time, the water just kept coming – and never stopped. In May, the reservoir apparently reached a record height of 17.5 meters (57 feet).
And then, in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the dam broke.
It was a shocking moment in this war full of shocking moments. The images of the destroyed dam and the water gushing through it circled the globe.
The 18 trillion liters of water that the dam had held back has since been cascading through the vast void in the center of the dam and into the lower Dnieper, flooding towns clinging to the banks of the river. Right in the same week that the Ukrainians launched their long-awaited counteroffensive.
A coincidence? Might the Russian army have intentionally blown up the dam to slow down the Ukrainians? Or was there a different cause?
With the reservoir shrinking by the hour, Mayor Kunez says that his town has also been gripped by desperation. Because they didn’t know for how much longer they would be able to draw water from their wells, he says, the residents of Osokorivka began filling all the containers they could find with water, including their bathtubs.
Once the Ukrainian army reconquered the destroyed town in April 2022, Kunez fought hard to bring its 1,800 residents back home. During a meeting two days before the breaching of the dam, he was still full of optimism. But without the reservoir, he sees no future for agriculture in the area, nor does he believe his village will be reconstructed. "Without water, life will not return," Kunez says over the phone.
Evacuations and a Lack of Drinking Water
Below the dam, the masses of water have been destroying life on both banks. Dozens of towns and villages in southern Ukraine have been flooded, as have parts of the regional capital of Kherson. Because the Russian-controlled left bank of the river is slightly lower, destruction from the floodwaters has been worse. The completion of the Kakhovka Dam in 1956 created a reservoir that irrigates vast swaths of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions through a network of canals. The water has long made it possible to farm melons, tomatoes and other produce in the steppes of southeastern Ukraine.
Now, people who were once able to find work in the region thanks to the water are trying to flee. Thousands have been evacuated, with many of their animals dying in the flooding. The government has warned of a lack of drinking water that could befall the three regions, affecting tens of thousands of people. Concerns of disease in the flooded areas are also rife. Thus far, there have been no reports of deaths on the Ukrainian-controlled side of the river. Because the floodwaters rose slowly, it was possible to save those in danger.
On the other side of the river, Russian occupation authorities in Nova Kakhovka and Oleshky are reporting the first deaths caused by the flooding. Russian army positions are also thought to have been damaged by the flooding – and water supplies on the Crimean Peninsula are at risk.
Oleshky on June 5, 2023 ...
... and again following the breach of the Kakhovka Dam.
Many have been concerned since last fall that the dam might be blown up. Russian propagandists have long been fantasizing about just such an event and Ukrainian officials have issued numerous warnings. But how did the catastrophe actually come to pass?
Despite the massive consequences, it remains unclear what exactly caused the breach. Images show a gaping hole in the concrete structure, and there is much to indicate that the Russian occupiers, who had control of the dam and the power plant it drove, were also responsible for its destruction. An intentional detonation would be a massive war crime. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke of a "new dimension."
On Friday, Ukrainian intelligence claimed they had proof, in the form of an intercepted telephone call between Russian troops, that Russia is behind the destruction of the dam.
Ukrainian intelligence reported last year that the Russian occupiers had planted explosives in the dam and were planning on blowing it up, though they did not offer proof. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned the world in October of a possible terrorist act involving the Kakhovka Dam. After the disaster on Tuesday, he described the breaching of the dam as an "environmental weapon of mass destruction."
Russian President Vladimir Putin also referred to the destruction of the dam as a "barbaric act." Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed that Ukraine had destroyed the dam so as to be able to redeploy troops and materiel from the Kherson region "to the area of their offensive." Neither Shoigu nor any other Russian official, however, was able to offer up a credible account for how the Ukrainians might have been able to blow up a facility held by the Russians.
A Possible Explosion?
At first glance, the explanation seems plausible that the Russians were hoping to slow the Ukrainian counteroffensive by destroying the dam. In truth, though, the offensive is taking place far to the east. Michael Kofman, one of the leading experts on the Ukrainian armed forces, also doesn’t believe that the dam breach will have any effect on the offensive.
Hydraulic engineers and ballistics experts believe it is unlikely that the dam was destroyed from the outside by an air strike. An explosion inside the construction is considered by many to be the most likely scenario. "Satellite images show an explosive failure, making it unlikely that it was a failure caused by aging," says Robert Boes, a hydraulic engineer at the technical university ETH Zürich. The main structure suffered massive damage, he says, which seems to indicate sabotage.
British ballistics expert Chris Cobb-Smith also believes an explosion from inside the dam to be the most likely explanation. Numerous hydropower experts also believe the failure could have been caused by an explosive fixed on the outside of the dam or in the hallways within. Experts like hydraulic expert Boes do not exclude the possibility that the dam collapsed on its own due to material fatigue or improper operation. But material fatigue, says Boes, tends to be preceded by smaller leaks appearing several weeks prior to collapse.
The Norwegian institute NORSAR, which specializes in earthquake research, reported on Thursday that regional stations recorded seismic signals at 2:45 a.m. on Tuesday morning, matching both the location and timing of the dam’s rupture. The institute says the evidence points to an explosion.
Destructive Excess or Sheer Incompetence?
There is, however, some research out there that contradicts the idea of an explosive causing the breach. According to the independent Russian experts from the Conflict Intelligence Team, the collapse of the dam was the result of "criminal neglect by the Russian military." Satellite images, they say, show that the Russians hadn’t been regulating the amount of water in the reservoir since November 2022, which gradually weakened the dam and ultimately led to its failure. The organization believes that it was merely a coincidence that the dam collapsed just as the Ukrainian counteroffensive was getting started.
In other words, according to the evidence currently available, the Russian occupiers either destroyed the dam in a fit of destructive excess, or they allowed the dam to destroy itself out of sheer incompetence.
The entire episode is also difficult to comprehend because if the Russians did intentionally destroy the dam, they inflicted the greatest harm on themselves. "At water levels of 13.5 meters, I expected the occupiers to blow up the dam," says Ihor Pylypenko, a professor of geography at the University of Kherson. "But not at a level of 17.5 meters." In the spring, as he was monitoring the water level in the reservoir with the help of images posted to social media, he says he had hoped it was an indication that the Russians were exercising damage control and trying to protect the dam by intentionally reducing the amount of water in the reservoir. But then, the water level increased massively. "More recently, the occupiers didn’t allow any water to run off, though they had the technical means at hand to do so," says Pylypenko. He believes that floodwaters have covered 4,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory.
One of the greatest tragedies took place on the Russian side of the river, where the occupation authorities reacted extremely slowly and have shown no urgency at all. In chat groups, people have been begging for help for days for older family members. One such message reads: "I beg that someone save my grandma and grandpa. Oleshky, Sosnovaya Street, 12. Two elderly people, 80+. The man cannot walk, cannot swim and suffers from heart problems. He urgently needs medical care." Oleshky lies around 60 kilometers from the destroyed Kakhovka Dam and a majority of the town is flooded, as shown by a video that DER SPIEGEL has been able to authenticate.
Saving People from the Rooftops
A 67-year-old woman named Lyudmila described over the phone the dramatic situation in which Oleshky finds itself. When the water reached the upper floor of their home, she says, she and her husband climbed into the attic. But with the water continuing to rise, they jumped through a hatch into the brackish water and climbed onto the roof from the outside. "People were crying out for help in panic,” says Lyudmila. The first boat that floated by was completely full. Two more hours passed before the couple was rescued.
Lyudmila and her husband were taken to a clinic located on higher ground. But there, too, they say, the water is now rising. The building is packed with adults and children, they report, and there is no food or drinking water available. "We can’t go anywhere, all the streets are flooded. We are stuck.”
According to a number of reports, the Russian Ministry of Emergencies and Disaster Relief has been unable to respond to the massive number of requests for help. They lack boats and are relying on volunteers to collect data on those who are missing. There have also been reports of Russian soldiers at checkpoints turning away people begging for help, particularly those holding Ukrainian passports. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy says that Ukrainians attempting to help people in the occupied territories from the other side of the Dnieper River have come under fire.
Bild vergrößernMariya Andriyez of Kherson was saved from her third-floor apartment: "Last night, I wasn’t worried a bit when I went to bed." Foto: Maxim Dondyuk / DER SPIEGEL
On the Ukrainian side, as well, it is primarily the elderly who have needed to be rescued. On Wednesday morning, 24 hours after the disaster upstream, the water began rising in the city of Kherson. Small trees and road signs in areas near the port began disappearing in the waves.
Police officers, soldiers and volunteer helpers were heading out across the water in inflatable dinghies, while rescue vehicles were plowing their way through the flood. Confused cats and dogs could be seen wandering around aimlessly. Shortly after 10 a.m., rescue workers helped Mariya Andriyez out of one of the boats. A retiree, she has lived for half a century in an apartment on a Dnieper tributary. "Last night, I wasn’t worried a bit when I went to bed," she says. "I live on the third floor, after all." But when she woke up the next morning, she says, the water had reached the second floor. Because the entrance to the building was underwater, neighbors broke a window in the staircase and lifted Andriyez into a boat. The water managed to achieve what the war and the Russian occupation was unable to: It drove Andriyez out of her home.
On Thursday, Zelenskyy visited the flooded region where rescuers helped Andriyez out of the boat. A short time later, the site was struck by a Russian missile.
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