The destruction in the early hours of June 6 [2023] of Ukraine’s massive Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper River is a dangerous escalation of the war between Ukraine and Russia. It risks massive human and ecological consequences to communities downstream being hit by vast floodwaters, and also threatens a potentially catastrophic nuclear accident. World leaders are also calling it a war crime. ...
Kakhovka Dam, one of the largest in Europe, was built in the late 1950s to provide hydroelectric power, irrigation water, and improved navigation on the Dnieper River which flows from Russia through Belarus and Ukraine before emptying into the Black Sea. When full—and it was full when it was destroyed—the reservoir contains 18 cubic kilometers (nearly 5 trillion gallons) of water. That’s around four times the volume of California’s largest reservoir, the Shasta reservoir, and about half the volume of Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States. The reservoir behind the dam also supplies critical cooling water to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, and feeds water into the North Crimea Canal, delivering nearly 80% of Crimea’s water. ...
Water and water systems have been the targets of attacks from the beginning of this war. Researchers have documented more than 50 such attacks on dams, water supply systems, city water treatment plants, pipelines, and other facilities. At the beginning of the war, the Russians destroyed a small dam blocking water flows to Crimea. And civilian water treatment and delivery systems have been widely attacked by the Russians, cutting water supplies and sanitation services for hundreds of thousands of people. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians cut levees to flood areas north of Kyiv to halt the initial Russian armored assault on the capital. But until now, there had been nothing as massive or devastating as this event.
Attacks on dams are war crimes, as explicitly noted in Article 56 of Protocol I and Article 15 of Protocol II of the 1977 Protocols to the Geneva Conventions. These international laws prohibit attacks on infrastructure “containing dangerous forces” including explicitly “dams” and “dykes” if such attacks “may cause the release of dangerous forces and consequent severe losses among the civilian population.” Despite these prohibitions, conflicts over water and attacks on water systems are on the rise, with a dramatic increase in the past two decades.
There is precedent for Russian destruction of dams on the Dnieper River. In August 1941, during World War II, the retreating Soviet Army destroyed another dam on the Dnieper at Zaporizhzhia, the Dnieper Dam, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the advancing Nazis. At the time it was the largest dam in the world. The subsequent flooding reportedly killed tens of thousands of people downstream. ...
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