Ukraine’s military said Russian forces have blown up a large dam in southern Ukraine, while the Moscow-installed official in the city of Nova Kakhovka in the Russian-controlled portion of the country’s Kherson region blamed the dam’s destruction on Ukrainian shelling.

According to the Reuters news agency, the dam holds an 18-cubic-kilometre (4.3-cubic-mile) reservoir which supplies water to the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, and to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which is also under Russian control.
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 the situation is “controllable” at the moment.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called an emergency meeting of the country’s national security council following the attack at the dam, said Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.

Russian state news agency TASS quoted an unnamed source close to the matter as saying the dam was destroyed and the territory was flooding.
A second Russian state news agency, RIA Novosti, quoted the Moscow-installed mayor of Nova Kakhovka, Vladimir Leontiev, as saying the dam had been hit by shelling which he blamed on Ukraine.
Unverified videos on social media showed a series of intense explosions around the Kakhovka dam.
Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford, reporting from Kyiv, said that analysts had long seen the dam as a potential target for both sides in the war.
The dam is important in supplying water and irrigation for Russian-occupied Crimea, while Russia could see the destruction of the dam as a way of making it more difficult for Ukrainian forces to cross the Dnipro river and enter Crimea in a ground offensive, Stratford said.

DEVELOPING STORY,
Ukraine says Russian forces blew up Nova Kakhovka dam in Kherson
Ukrainian authorities are evacuating residents in several areas following the destruction of large Soviet-era dam.
RELATED STORIES

According to the Ukraine War Environmental Consequences Working Group, a total collapse in the dam would wash away much of the left bank and a severe drop in the reservoir has the potential to deprive the nuclear plant of crucial cooling, as well as dry up the water supply in northern Crimea