Josep Borrel, the EU’s foreign policy leader, said on Friday that “everything indicates” that Russia is to blame for the Kakhovka dam breach, which Moscow and Kiev have both claimed responsibility for.
The dam was demolished on Tuesday, forcing thousands of people to evacuate their homes as water poured into the Dnipro River, drowning dozens of towns and portions of Kherson and triggering worries of a humanitarian catastrophe.
“The dam was not bombed. It was destroyed by explosives installed in the areas where the turbines are located. This area is under Russian control,” Borrell told Spanish public television.
“I wasn’t there to find out who did it. But everything seems to indicate that if it took place in an area under Russian control, it is difficult to believe it could have been someone else,” he added.
“In any case, the consequences for Ukraine are terrible, from the humanitarian point of view for the displaced people, and from the environmental point of view because the (dam’s) destruction will cause an ecological disaster.”
At least five people died and 13 are missing in flooding after the breach, Ukraine’s Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said Friday in a social media post.
Flooding has already put 600 square kilometres of land under water, according to a regional governor Thursday.
