A major dam and power plant were destroyed early Tuesday in a part of southern Ukraine controlled by Russia, causing massive flooding and putting thousands of homes at risk.
Both sides accused each other of being responsible for the incident.
Video footage released by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on his official Telegram channel showed water from the Kakhovka dam moving downriver toward the city of Kherson, where hundreds of thousands of people live. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is also nearby, though it is located upstream from the dam.
The dam contains about 18 million cubic meters (4.8 billion gallons) of water.
The Ukrainian Interior Ministry wrote on Telegram that the Kakhovka dam had been blown up by Russia. Russian officials countered that the Kakhovka dam was damaged by Ukrainian military strikes in the contested area.
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Ukraine’s nuclear operator Energoatom said in a Telegram statement that the blowing up of the dam “could have negative consequences for the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant,” but at the moment situation is “controllable.” A severe drop in the reservoir has the potential to deprive the nuclear plant of crucial cooling.
The U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency wrote on Twitter that its experts were closely monitoring the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, and there was “no immediate nuclear safety risk” at the facility.
