The dam and the flood

Evidence suggests Russia destroyed the Kakhovka dam, creating a human and environmental disaster. The outcomes could prove crucial for Ukraine's future

- Dan Sabbagh

Last weekend, four-and-a-half days after Ukraine's Kakhovka dam burst, the longer-term scale of the flooding disaster was gradually becoming apparent. In the station at Mykolaiv, the first city inland, pensioner Olena Lysiuk said she had no choice but to quit her apartment in Kherson, even though it was too high up to be flooded.

"It's not just that we don't have any water, gas or electricity. We have also got used to not having those during the Russian occupation. But now the sewerage doesn't work. That's the new problem," Lysiuk said. She planned to stay in Mykolaiv with relatives, with the state having given her about 10,000 hryvnia ($270) in support.

Vasyl Chornyi got off an evacuation carriage from Kherson while the train was joined to another. The Inhulets river flooded part of his village, Fedorivka, 30km north-east of Kherson, and while his house wasn't directly affected, he too was leaving because "we fear a pandemic".

"The cemetery is drowned, the sewers have been drowned," Chornyi said. "When the waters go down, there will be lots of dead fish, other decay. In Kherson, the wells are spoiled. Outside toilets are flooded," he said. He acknowledged that, while the Russian occupation between March and November had not forced him out, the flooding disaster had.

Whole houses have been washed into the Black Sea. Last Friday an intact roof ended up on a beach in Odesa, more than 200km away. People in the city have been told not to try to clean up the rubbish, reeds and other waterborne detritus amid concern that landmines could be floating dangerously within. That leaves the clean-up to the already stretched state emergency services.