Russia-Ukraine war live updates: thousands evacuated as UN says scale of dam disaster will only be clear in coming days – latest news

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As Reuters reports, US President Joe Biden told G7 leaders last month that Washington supported joint allied training programmes for Ukrainian pilots on F-16s.

Zelenskiy says he has received 'serious, powerful offer' of F-16s

Meanwhile France is unenthusiastic about a proposal for Nato to open a liaison office in Japan, an official has said, days after the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said the move would be a “big mistake”.

There have been suggestions, alluded to most recently by the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, that the organisation would open an office in Tokyo – its first in Asia – in response to the growing challenge posed by China and Russia.

Growing military cooperation between Beijing and Moscow in the Asia-Pacific was underlined on Tuesday when the Russian and Chinese militaries conducted joint patrols over the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea, prompting South Korea and Japan to scramble fighter jets in response:

If you’re just joining us, here is a summary of the latest developments:

• ‘Russians have a greater and clearer interest in flooding lower Dnipro’, says ISW. The Institute for the Study of War has published its report on the dam’s collapse. The US thinktank says, it “has not yet observed clear evidence of what transpired at the KHPP on June 6 and is therefore unable to offer an independent assessment of responsibility at the time of this publication.”

• Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has condemned the attack on the Nova Kakhovka dam in the Russia-occupied south of his country as “an environmental bomb of mass destruction”. Zelenskiy made the claim in his nightly video address to the nation on Tuesday, adding that only liberation of the whole of Ukraine from the Russian invasion could guarantee against new “terrorist” acts.

• The US “cannot say conclusively” who was responsible, national security council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters at the White House. “We’re doing the best we can to assess”, he said noting “destruction of civilian infrastructure is not allowed by the laws of war”. Earlier Tuesday, NBC News reported that the US government had intelligence indicating Russia was behind the incident, according to two US officials and one western official.

• UN aid chief Martin Griffiths told the UN security council that “the sheer magnitude of the catastrophe will only become fully realised in the coming days.” “But it’s already clear that it will have grave and far-reaching consequences for thousands of people in southern Ukraine on both sides of the frontline through the loss of homes, food, safe water and livelihoods,” he added.

• The Kremlin has accused Ukraine of deliberately sabotaging the dam. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, told reporters: “We can state unequivocally that we are talking about deliberate sabotage by the Ukrainian side.” He said [Russian president] Vladimir Putin had been briefed on the situation.

• Zelenskiy’s chief of staff says he “does not understand” how there could be any doubt that Russian forces blew up the dam. In a statement, Andriy Yermak said: “At 2.50am, Russian troops blew up the Kakhovka hydroelectric station and its dam. I do not understand how there can be any doubt about this. Both constructions are located in the temporary Russian-occupied territories. Neither shelling nor any other external influence was capable of destroying the structures. The explosion came from within.”

• UK prime minister Rishi Sunak said that if the bursting of the dam was proven to be intentional, it would represent a “new low” in Russian aggression. Speaking to reporters on board his official plane to Washington, where he is to hold pre-planned talks with US president Joe Biden, Sunak said the UK’s military and intelligence agencies were looking into the blast and it was too soon to pre-empt the cause and make a definitive judgment.

• Energy company Ukrahydroenergo said the hydroelectric power plant at the dam had been blown up “as a result of the explosion of the engine room from the inside” and was irreparable.

• The Ukrainian government called for people living downstream to evacuate in the face of catastrophic flooding and thousands of people have fled their homes. The governor of the Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, said about 16,000 people were in the “critical zone” on the Ukrainian-controlled right bank of the river.

• The areas most under threat of flooding are the islands along the course of the Dnipro downstream of Nova Kakhovka and much of the Russian-held left bank in southern Kherson. Andrey Alekseyenko, one of the Russian-installed officials in occupied Kherson, has posted to Telegram to say that up to 22,000 people are in the flood plains in Russian-controlled territory.

• Ukraine’s foreign ministry called for an urgent meeting of the UN security council to discuss what it called a Russian “terrorist act against Ukrainian critical infrastructure”. At the meeting Ukraine accused Russia of “floundering in the mud of lies”.

• At the meeting, Russia’s UN envoy was accused of floundering in a “mud of lies” after he claimed at an emergency session of the security council that Ukraine destroyed Kakhovka dam in a “war crime”. Sergiy Kyslytsya, the Ukraine envoy to the UN, said it was typical of Russia to blame the victim for its own crimes, pointing out Russia has been in control of the dam for more than a year and it was physically impossible to blow it up by shelling. He said the dam was mined by the Russian occupiers and they blew it up. He accused Russia of “floundering again in the mud of lies”.

• There seems to be no immediate safety threat to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant 200km downstream from the dam, according to Ukrainian and UN experts. Water from the reservoir affected by the destruction of the dam is used to supply the plant’s cooling systems.

• However, experts warned it could prove the country’s worst ecological disaster since the Chornobyl nuclear meltdown. Analysts told the Guardian at the very least, it had forced the evacuation of thousands of people, flooded national parks and jeopardised water supplies to millions of people. In the worst-case scenario, it may pose a long-term danger to Europe’s biggest nuclear plant, Zaporizhzhia, and could also spread agrotoxins and petrochemicals into the Black Sea.

Here is a gallery of pictures from the disaster:

The ISW has also published maps showing the extent of the flooding:

The ISW has also looked at the available information on whether there is a threat to the Zaporizhzhia power plant, which seems to be less acute than initially feared, it reports.

The plant will have sufficient water for cooling for “some months”, International Atomic Energy Agency director Rafael Grossi said.

The ISW quotes Grassi and other officials:

• IAEA Director Rafael Grossi reported that the drop in the water level at the Kakhovka Reservoir poses “no immediate risk to the safety of the plant” and that IAEA personnel at the ZNPP are closely monitoring the situation. Grossi stated that the ZNPP is pumping water into its cooling channels and related systems, and that the large cooling pond next to the ZNPP will be ”sufficient to provide water for cooling for some months.”

• Ukrainian nuclear energy operator Energoatom’s President Petro Kotin stated that the fall in the water level at the Kakhovka Reservoir does not directly impact the water level in the ZNPP cooling pond and noted that the ZNPP pool basins are still at the same water level.

• Ukrainian Chief Inspector for Nuclear and Radiation Safety Oleh Korikov stated that the decrease in water level at the Kakhovka Reservoir will not affect the condition of the ZNPP provided that ZNPP personnel implement established safety measures.

'Russians have a greater and clearer interest in flooding lower Dnipro', says ISW

The Institute for the Study of War has published its report on the dam’s collapse. The US thinktank says, it “has not yet observed clear evidence of what transpired at the KHPP on June 6 and is therefore unable to offer an independent assessment of responsibility at the time of this publication.”

But, it added, “Statements by US and European officials are generally consistent with ISW’s October 2022 forecast that the Russians have a greater and clearer interest in flooding the lower Dnipro despite the damage to their own prepared defensive positions and forces than the Ukrainians.”

In October 2022 the USW said that “Russia may use the flooding to widen the Dnipro River and complicate Ukrainian counteroffensive attempts across the already-challenging water feature.”

In its update, it says that “Russian sources have expressed intense and explicit concern over the possibility that Ukraine has been preparing to cross the river and counterattack into east bank Kherson Oblast. Available footage from June 6, corroborated by claims made by Russian [military bloggers], suggests that the flooding washed away Ukrainian positions near the Dnipro shoreline and forced Ukrainian formations to evacuate while under Russian artillery fire.”

Reporters for the Associated Press are on the ground as evacuations are take place. They have filed this report:

In the early morning, before the floodwaters arrived, many residents tried to stick it out. But as the water level climbed in the streets, rising nearly to the tops of bus stops or the second floor of buildings, national guard teams and emergency crews fanned out to retrieve people who got stranded.

Some found themselves floating under the rafters of their homes as the waters rose. Space was limited on the trucks, and an effort to tow two rafts behind one went awry when the ropes snapped. One man chucked his German shepherd from the roof of the stalled truck onto another. Some residents clung to each other to keep from falling into the rising tide.

Officials said about 22,000 people live in areas at risk of flooding in Russian-controlled areas on the eastern side of the river, while 16,000 live in the most critical zone in Ukrainian-held territory on the western side — areas like those evacuated on Tuesday.

The United Nations said at least 16,000 people have already lost their homes, and efforts were underway to provide clean water, money, and legal and emotional support to those affected. Evacuations on the Ukrainian-controlled side of the river were ferrying people to cities including Mykolaiv and Odesa to the west.

Amnesty International’s regional director for Eastern Europe says that the dam’s destruction is a “huge humanitarian disaster”.

“While towns and villages in downstream Dnieper River are going under water, the human and environmental cost of the destruction of the Kakhovka dam is a huge humanitarian disaster — and the international community must unite to bring those responsible to justice,” said Marie Struthers.

“The rules of international humanitarian law specifically protect dams, due to the dangers their destruction poses to civilians,” she said.

Vasily Nebenzya, the Russian envoy to the UN, claimed Ukraine had committed an unthinkable crime. His main supportive evidence was an article in the Washington Post in which Andriy Kovalchuk, Ukraine’s southern commander, claimed Ukraine had tested strikes on the dam.

Nebenzya said the west was responsible for a coordinated disinformation campaign full of flawed logic that “reeks of schizophrenia and not of a latent variety”. He said the attack was part of an effort to distract from Ukraine’s clearly bogged down military offensive that was failing to meet its objectives.

“We are deeply bewildered that the UN secretariat repeatedly fails to condemn the attacks perpetrated by the Kyiv regime citing insufficient information. The secretary’s leadership does not hesitate to replicate politicised conclusions that suggest all such crimes are as a result of Russia’s actions in Ukraine,” he said.