Nature wins after Moscow's dam strike

Newly created miracle’ on Dnipro hosts animals, birds and saplings ina landscape of ponds and forests

- Luke Harding

Standing in a scene of shimmering green, Vadym Maniuk pointed to a young white willow tree. "What happened here is a miracle," he said. "Some of the saplings are already 4 metres tall. There is nowhere else like this on the planet."

Maniuk, an ecologist, picked his way through a jungle of new branches. The sky above was scarcely visible.

In the mud - cracked after days of sweltering temperatures - were the remains of molluscs. The scientist showed off black poplars, also racing upwards, reeds and a small mulberry.

Under the leaves it was pleasantly cool.

Just over a year ago, the spot where Maniuk stood was under several metres of water. In the 1920s Stalin ordered the construction of hydroelectric power stations along the Dnipro river. The area between two of the dams - one in Zaporizhzhia, the other in Kakhovka became a vast artificial lake.

This Soviet reservoir swallowed up ancient Cossack sites as well as vegetable gardens and grazing pastures used by generations of Ukrainian villagers for food and fuel. The Kremlin promised modernity instead: electricity and irrigation for fields and collective farms across the southern region.

After Vladimir Putin launched the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the reservoir quickly became part of the frontline.