Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine Destroyed: What to Know - The New York Times

A critical dam on the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine broke overnight on Tuesday, endangering thousands of people who live downstream. It was not immediately clear who caused the breech. Ukraine blamed Russia, saying there had been an explosion in an engine room. Russia said the Ukrainian forces had carried out a sabotage attack.

Ukrainian officials on Tuesday began evacuating people in the Kherson region as huge volumes of water gushed from the dam’s reservoir. Floodwaters are expected to continue to rise through the night and peak on Wednesday morning, the head of state-owned hydropower company said in an interview.

The U.N. secretary general, Antonio Guterres, decried the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, calling it a “monumental humanitarian, economic and ecological catastrophe” and “yet another example of the horrific price of war on people.”

via www.nytimes.com