The Ukrainian assault is in its early stages, and military experts say the decisive battles still lie ahead. But corpses of Russian soldiers and burnt-out armored vehicles lining the roadside in villages newly recaptured by Ukrainian troops attested to Kyiv’s biggest advances since last year.

Reuters reached the villages of Neskuchne and Storozheve over the past two days, providing the first independent confirmation of the Ukrainian advance several kilometers southwards along the Mokry Yali river into territory Russia had held since the early days of its invasion last year.

Several bodies of Russian soldiers lay in the streets of ruined and depopulated villages. Ukrainian troops in Storozheve told Reuters they had killed around 50 Russians and captured four there.

Moscow has not acknowledged any setbacks and says it has inflicted severe casualties on Ukrainians attempting to assault.

The Ukrainian military, which had maintained strict silence about the campaign for more than a week, came forward to tout the gains on Thursday, holding its first full media briefing since the counteroffensive began.

Troops had captured at least seven settlements and 100 square km (38 square miles) of territory in two major pushes in the south so far, Brigadier-General Oleksii Hromov said.

“We are ready to continue fighting to liberate our territory even with our bare hands,” he said.

The army on the southern front had advanced by up to 7 km (4.4 miles) in the area along the Mokry Yali, as well as by up to 3 km (1.8 miles) on another axis further west near the village of Mala Tokmachka, Ukrainian military officials said.

They also described advances in the east around the ruined city of Bakhmut, which Moscow seized last month as its only major prize for a huge winter and spring offensive that saw the bloodiest ground combat in Europe since World War Two.

Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted this week that Moscow’s goals in Ukraine remain unchanged despite the Ukrainian counteroffensive. He claimed that Russian forces were inflicting 10 times more casualties on Ukrainians than they were enduring.

Election plan

Russia’s announcement of a plan for elections in occupied territory was the latest effort by Moscow to convey that the situation was stable.

Russia’s TASS state news agency quoted election chief Ella Pamfilova as saying that both the DefenSe Ministry and the Federal Security Service (FSB) had concluded that it would be possible to hold the votes in September.

Russia proclaimed its annexation of four Ukrainian provinces last year, although it does not fully control any of them and does not hold the main population centres of two.

Kyiv says any elections staged by Russians on Ukrainian territory would be invalid and illegal.

The big test of Ukraine’s offensive still lies ahead. Russia has had months to prepare its defenses. Ukrainian troops have yet to reach the heaviest Russian defensive fortifications, which are set back from the front line.

Kyiv is believed to have prepared an attack force of around 12 brigades of thousands of soldiers each, most using newly arrived Western armored vehicles. Only a fraction of them have been engaged so far.

Russia, for its part, has released images of Western tanks and armored vehicles it says it has destroyed or captured.

In Brussels, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin presided over the latest meeting of a group of around 50 countries, set up by Washington to coordinate donations of Western arms to Ukraine.

“I ask that the members of this contact group continue to dig deep to provide Ukraine with the air defense assets and munitions that it so urgently needs to protect its citizens,” Austin said. – Rappler.com

Russia launched four cruise missiles on the city of Odesa, the South command of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said. The military said earlier that two missiles were destroyed before hitting their targets.

“As a result of air combat and blast waves, a business center, an educational institution, a residential complex, food establishments and shops in the city centre were damaged,” the South command said on the Telegram messaging app.

The three people killed were working at a retail chain’s warehouse when a missile hit, setting it ablaze, the military added. Seven people were wounded there.

“Sifting through the debris continues,” the military said. “There may be people under.”

Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesman for the Odesa military administration, posted a video and photographs showing multi-story buildings with parts of their walls missing and windows blown out, as well as firefighters battling against flames in what it appeared be a warehouse.

In a separate missile strike, Russian forces killed three civilians in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Facebook.

He said two people were killed in Kramatorsk and another in Kostiantynivka.

“The missiles … hit private houses in the cities and caused significant damage: in Kramatorsk, at least 5 private houses were destroyed and about two dozen damaged, in Kostiantynivka, two were destroyed and 55 damaged,” he said.

Ukrainian Air Forces said they destroyed three missiles and nine drones overnight.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Russia. Both Russia and Ukraine deny targeting civilians in their military operations. – Rappler.com

Not a single resident could be found in Neskuchne, one of a cluster of settlements on the Mokry Yali river that Ukraine says its troops have captured in a steady advance southwards into Russian-held territory since their operation began last week.

Ukrainian troops rode through the muddy streets on the back of a tank and in a pick-up truck. A warplane flew overhead, firing flares.

“Three days ago the Russian forces were still here. We chased them out of Neskuchne. Glory to Ukraine,” said Artem, a member of a Ukrainian territorial defense unit, who gave no surname. “These are Ukrainian lands.”

The mainly one- and two-storey buildings in the village, which had a population of several hundred before Russia invaded last year, had nearly all been damaged. The scene was silent, apart for the crump of artillery fire in the distance.

Reuters saw at least three dead Russian soldiers lying in the street, including one whose fly-blown body lay by an abandoned Russian military vehicle. Artem said the advancing Ukrainian troops had watched from a drone as comrades initially tried to evacuate him, only to dump him where he lay and flee.

It was the first independent confirmation of Ukraine’s advance in the area, roughly 90 km southwest of the city of Donetsk, one of several axes where it is trying to break through Russian lines in the early days of a long-awaited counteroffensive.

Missile strike

Elsewhere on Tuesday, a Russian missile strike killed at least 11 people in an apartment building and warehouses in Kryvyi Rih, birthplace of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Residents sobbed outside the burnt-out apartment block and smoke billowed after the early-morning attack. Officials said at least four people were killed there and another seven in the warehouses. Twenty-eight were injured.

Survivors described two explosions. Olha Chernousova said she was thrown out of her bed by a violent blast wave. She escaped onto her balcony to wait for rescuers. “I thought I would have to jump into a tree.”

Moscow denies intentionally targeting civilians but has repeatedly struck apartment buildings with long-range missiles, often at perceived turning points in the war. It killed 25 people in an apartment block in the central city of Uman six weeks ago at the start of an intensified campaign of drone and missile strikes in the run-up to Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

Early days of assault

Ukraine began its counterassault last week after sticking to the defensive through seven months of a huge Russian winter and spring campaign that yielded scant gains despite the bloodiest ground combat in Europe since World War Two.

So far Ukraine’s offensive is still in its early days, with tens of thousands of fresh troops and hundreds of Western armored vehicles yet to be committed to the fight. Russia, for its part, has had months to prepare several layers of defensive lines, meaning Ukraine’s advance does not necessarily amount to a breach through the front.

After a week of giving little information about its offensive, Ukraine said on Monday it had recaptured seven settlements so far. Troops have advanced up to 6.5 km (4 miles) and seized 90 square km (35 square miles) of ground along a 100 km-long stretch of the southern front line, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, at a televised meeting with Russian military bloggers, said on Tuesday the goals of Russia’s military campaign had not fundamentally changed, and claimed that Ukraine had suffered 10 times the casualties as Russia.

Leaked US intelligence documents have estimated Russia has suffered losses several times greater than Ukraine’s, with the worst casualties coming in recent months during the winter and spring campaign that captured scant territory.

Russia has not acknowledged any Ukrainian gains since the counteroffensive began last week, and says it has repelled repeated advances. Its defense ministry said on Tuesday its forces had fended off Ukrainian attacks near the villages of Makarivka, Rivnopil and Prechystivka. Makarivka is located further south along the river from Neskuchne.

Moscow also released video footage of what it said were German-made Leopard tanks and US-made Bradley Fighting Vehicles captured in battle. Reuters could not immediately verify the location or time of the footage.

Military analysts say the fighting so far is probably still mainly probing attacks by the Ukrainians who have yet to unleash the bulk of their forces, while Russia’s main defensive fortifications still lie further back. – Rappler.com

Residents sobbed outside the burnt-out apartment block, from which smoke billowed after the early-morning attack on the central Ukrainian city. Officials said at least 25 people were wounded and others could still be trapped under the rubble.

Olha Chernousova, who lives in the five-story apartment block, said she was woken by an explosion which sounded like thunder and thrown out of her bed by a violent blast wave.

“I ran to my front door, but it was very hot there… the smoke was heavy,” she said.

“What could I do? I was sat on the balcony, terrified I would lose consciousness. Nobody came for a long time… I thought I would have to jump into a tree.”

Around her, the street and courtyard were strewn with glass and bricks. At least five cars were ruined husks.

Ihor Lavrenenko, who lives in a different part of the building, said he heard two blasts.

“I woke up from the first bang, a weak one, and went straightaway onto the balcony. Then the second one erupted overhead, I watched from my balcony as hot debris fell,” he said.

Rescue operations were underway in the apartment building and in a destroyed warehouse, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said on the Telegram messaging app.

City mayor Oleksandr Vilkul confirmed at least six people had been killed. In an earlier post, he had said three people were killed, at least seven were believed trapped under the rubble and that 25 others were wounded.

Zelenskiy condemns attack

“Russian killers continue their war against residential buildings, ordinary cities and people,” Zelenskiy, who was born in Kryvyi Rih, said on Telegram.

Russia did not immediately comment on the attack. It has repeatedly struck cities across Ukraine since its full-scale invasion in February 2022 though it denies targeting civilians.

Moscow has also accused Ukraine of cross-border shelling as Kyiv carries out counter-offensive operations. The governor of Kursk in Russia said on Tuesday several houses had been damaged and power supplies disrupted in two villages in the region near the border.

During the early hours of Tuesday, air raid sirens blared across the whole of Ukraine, with Kyiv’s military officials saying air defense forces destroyed all Russian missiles targeting the Ukrainian capital.

Ukraine’s top military command said that air forces destroyed 10 out of 14 cruise missiles Russia launched on Ukraine and one of the four Iranian-made drones. – Rappler.com

Some 25 battles had taken place over the past day near the eastern town of Bakhmut, and further south near Avdiivka and Maryinka, all in the Donetsk region, but also near Bilohorivka in the Luhansk region, Ukraine’s armed forces general staff said.

Ukraine said on Sunday its troops had made advances on three villages in Donetsk: Blahodatne, Neskuchne and Makarivka.

The claims could not be independently verified and there was no immediate comment from Russian officials.

Some prominent Russian military bloggers indicated that while Ukrainian forces took Blahodatne and Neskuchne, fighting for Makarivka was going on.

Both sides have said their forces had inflicted heavy personnel and equipment losses on their opponents over the past week when Ukraine’s counteroffensive was taking shape.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Ukraine had failed to breach Russian defenses, while his defense ministry said it had destroyed several main battle Leopard tanks and other equipment that Ukraine had received from the West.

While staying largely silent over the past week about its counteroffensive, Ukraine’s military has reported daily battlefield successes.

“Over the last week in the Bakhmut direction, the Russian invaders suffered significant losses,” the general staff said on Monday.

The governor of the Donetsk region in Ukraine said one civilian was killed and two were wounded by Russian fire in the Avdiivka region on Sunday.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said that Kyiv wanted to discuss details of the “aircraft coalition” with its allies at the next meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on June 15 in Brussels.

Zelenskiy has long been appealing for the US-made F-16 fighter jets, saying their acquisition with Ukrainian pilots would be a sure signal from the world that Russia’s invasion would end in defeat.

“At this stage, we are talking about training of pilots… and our technicians and engineers,” Ukraine’s Military Media Center quoted Reznikov as saying. – Rappler.com

With virtually no independent reporting from the front lines and Kyiv maintaining a strict policy of silence, it was impossible to assess whether Ukraine was having success in penetrating Russian defenses to drive out occupying forces.

The counteroffensive is ultimately expected to involve thousands of Ukrainian troops trained and equipped by the West. Russia, which has had months to prepare its defensive lines, says it has repelled attacks since the start of the week. Kyiv has so far said its main effort has yet to begin.

Moscow and pro-war Russian bloggers reported intense battles on Friday on the Zaporizhzhia front near the city of Orikhiv, around the mid-point of the “land bridge” linking Russia to the Crimea peninsula, seen as one of Ukraine’s likeliest targets.

Ben Barry, senior fellow for land warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said reports from the Russian bloggers of German-made Leopard tanks and US Bradley armored vehicles near Tokmak south of Orikhiv, if confirmed, would provide the first evidence that Ukraine’s new brigades of Western-armed troops had joined the battle.

In all, Kyiv has 12 brigades totalling 50,000-60,000 troops ready to unleash in the counteroffensive. Nine of the brigades have been armed and trained by the West.

“They’ve got a choice of how many they commit initially and how many they keep in reserve in case the battlefield dynamics change,” Barry said, adding that Ukraine’s initial priority would be trying to keep the Russians off balance and gain tactical surprise through deception and camouflage.

In a statement, the Russian defense ministry said: “The armed forces of Ukraine continued attempts to conduct offensive operations in the southern Donetsk and Zaporozhzhia directions.”

It said its troops had repelled two Ukrainian assaults just south of Orikhiv and four near Velyka Novosilka further east. It described Ukraine’s Velyka Novosilka attack force as including two battalions of troops supported by tanks. Several battalions of up to 1,000 troops comprise a brigade.

Kyiv has reported fighting in the east where battles have been ongoing for months, but has said almost nothing about the situation on the southern front, where it is widely expected to attempt its main push towards the coast.

Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said only that battles were continuing for Velyka Novosilka and Russian troops were mounting “active defense” at Orikhiv.

In the east, Ukraine has reported gains of territory around Bakhmut, which Russian forces captured last month after nearly a year of the deadliest ground combat in Europe since World War Two. Ukraine generally bars journalists from reaching its side of front lines during offensive operations.

Flood disaster overshadows fighting

FLOOD DISASTER OVERSHADOWS FIGHTING

The initial days of the counteroffensive have been overshadowed this week by a huge humanitarian disaster after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam holding back the waters of the Dnipro River that bisects Ukraine.

Thousands of people have been forced to evacuate homes flooded in the war zone, vast nature preserves have been wiped out and the destruction to irrigation systems is likely to cripple agriculture across much of southern Ukraine for decades. Kyiv said at least four people had died and 13 were missing.

Ukraine’s security service released a recording on Friday of what it described as an intercepted phone call in which a Russian soldier confides to another man that a Russian sabotage group had blown the dam up. Moscow says Ukraine sabotaged it.

Western countries say they are still gathering evidence about who is to blame, but believe Ukraine would have no reason to inflict such a devastating disaster on itself, especially right as its forces were shifting onto the attack.

In Hola Prystan on the Russian-occupied side of the river, rescuers evacuated residents in rubber dinghies. Villagers carried pets or small children to safety.

“We ended up at the kindergarten because our house was carried away by a torrent of water,” said a woman who gave her name as Oksana, being evacuated in a boat with her teenage daughter and their two dogs.

The river serves as the front line dividing the two sides. Both accuse the other of shelling across it, interfering with rescue efforts. The Kremlin said Ukrainian shelling had killed people including a pregnant woman. It provided no evidence.

In his nightly video address, delivered on a train after a visit to the flood zone in the south, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy thanked Ukrainian troops and repeated earlier claims of success in Bakhmut, but gave no further account of fighting.

“We see every detail. But it’s not time to talk about it today,” he said.

Ukraine has been attacking targets deep in Russian-held territory for weeks in preparation for its assault. Moscow has been striking Ukrainian cities with cruise missiles and drones.

In the latest Russian air strikes, Ukraine said it had shot down four of six missiles overnight.

The interior ministry said one person had been killed, three were wounded, and four buildings were destroyed by falling debris. It posted images on Telegram of firefighters attending the smouldering wreckage of what appeared to be homes.

The air force also said two cruise missiles had struck a civilian object in the central Ukrainian region of Cherkasy. Regional governor Ihor Taburets said at least eight people were wounded.

Moscow said Ukraine had struck the Russian city of Voronezh with a drone, wounding three people. Kyiv withholds comment on reports of attacks inside Russia. – Rappler.com

Moscow, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Kyiv blamed each other for the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Station and dam on Tuesday, June 6, which unleashed flood water from the Dnipro River.

“Many important issues were discussed. The operational situation in the region as a result of the disaster, evacuation of the population from potential flood zones, elimination of the emergency caused by the dam explosion, organization of life support for the flooded areas,” Zelenskiy said on the Telegram messaging app under video footage of his visit.

“Also, the prospects for restoring the region’s ecosystem and the operational military situation in the man-made disaster area.”

Kherson lies on the Dnipro, about 60 km (37 miles) downstream from the Kakhovka dam.

In a separate post, also accompanied by video footage, the president said he had visited a road crossing where people were being evacuated.

Kherson’s governor had said earlier on Thursday that 600 square kilometers, or 230 square miles, of the region was under water – most of it on the Russian-occupied side of the river – and that nearly 2,000 people had already left affected areas.

“It is important to calculate the damage and allocate funds to compensate residents affected by the disaster and develop a program to compensate for losses or relocate businesses within the Kherson region,” Zelenskiy said. – Rappler.com

Residents waded through flooded streets carrying children on their shoulders, dogs in their arms and belongings in plastic bags while rescuers used rubber boats to search areas where the waters reached above head height.

Ukraine said the flood would leave hundreds of thousands of people without access to drinking water, swamp tens of thousands of hectares of agricultural land and leave more barren.

“If the water rises for another meter, we will lose our house,” said Oleksandr Reva, in a village on the bank, who was moving family belongings into the abandoned home of a neighbor on higher ground. A roof of a house could be seen being swept down the swollen Dnipro River.

The Nova Kakhovka dam disaster coincides with a looming, long-vaunted counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces against Russia’s invasion, seen as the next major phase of the war. The sides traded blame for continued shelling across the flood zone and warned of drifting landmines unearthed by the flooding.

Kyiv said on Wednesday its troops in the east had advanced by more than a kilometer around the ruined city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, its most explicit claim of progress since Russia reported the start of the Ukrainian offensive this week. Russia said it had fought off the attack.

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security council, said assaults under way were still localized, and the full-scale offensive had yet to begin. “When we start (it), everyone will know about it, they will see it,” he told Reuters.

Kyiv said several months ago the dam had been mined by Russian forces that have controlled it since early in the 15-month-old invasion, and has suggested Moscow blew it up to try to stop Ukrainian forces crossing the Dnipro in their counteroffensive.

Residents in the flood zone in the country’s south, which stretches to the Dnipro estuary on the Black Sea, blamed the bursting of the dam on Russian troops who controlled it from their positions on the opposite bank.

“They hate us,” Reva said. “They want to destroy a Ukrainian nation and Ukraine itself. And they don’t care by what means because nothing is sacred for them.”

Russia imposed a state of emergency in the parts of Kherson province it controls, where many towns and villages lie in lowlands below the dam.

In the town of Nova Kakhovka right next to the dam, brown water submerged main streets largely empty of residents.

Valery Melnik, 53, said he had hoped for help from local authorities to pump out the water from his swamped home, but so far “they are not doing anything”.

Over 30,000 cubic meters of water were gushing out of the dam’s reservoir every second and the town was at risk of contamination from the torrent, Russia’s TASS news agency quoted the Russian-installed mayor, Vladimir Leontyev, as saying.

Ukraine expects the floodwaters will stop rising by the end of Wednesday after reaching around five meters (16.5 feet) overnight, presidential deputy chief Oleksiy Kuleba said.

Two thousand people have been evacuated from the Ukrainian-controlled part of the flood zone and waters had reached their highest level in 17 settlements with a combined population of 16,000 people.

TASS said water levels could remain elevated in places for up to 10 days.

Counterattack

The mighty Dnipro River that bisects Ukraine forms the front line across the south. The huge reservoir behind the dam was one of Ukraine’s main geographic features, and its waters irrigated large areas of one of the world’s biggest grain-exporting nations, including Crimea, seized by Russia in 2014.

“The sheer magnitude of the catastrophe will only become fully realized in the coming days,” United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths told the UN Security Council.

Targeting dams in war is explicitly banned by the Geneva Conventions. Neither side has presented public evidence demonstrating who was responsible.

“The whole world will know about this Russian war crime,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly address, calling it “an environmental bomb of mass destruction”. Earlier he said Russia blew up the hydro-electric power plant from within.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday Ukraine had sabotaged the dam to distract attention from a new counteroffensive he said was “faltering”.

The United States said it was still gathering evidence about who was to blame, but that Ukraine would have had no reason to inflict such devastation on itself.

Even with the evacuation under way, Russia shelled Ukrainian-held territory across the river. Crumps of incoming artillery sent people trying to flee running for cover in Kherson. Reuters reporters heard four incoming artillery blasts near a residential neighborhood that civilians were vacating on Tuesday evening. The governor said one person was killed.

For its part, Russia said a Ukrainian drone had struck a town on the opposite bank during evacuations there and accused the Ukrainian side of continuing shelling despite the flooding.

The emptying reservoir supplies water that cools Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia upstream. The UN nuclear watchdog said the plant should have enough water from a separate pond to cool its reactors for “some months”. – Rappler.com

Some residents cried as they packed belongings into cars. A meteorologist measuring the river level at the scene told Reuters the water was 3.5 meters (11.5 ft) higher than on Monday, before the dam was destroyed.

Kherson, on the shores of Ukraine’s vast Dnipro river, faces the Russian-controlled eastern bank.

Around 60 kilometers (37 miles) upstream lay the Nova Kakhovka dam, a 3.2 km-long 1950s structure which Kyiv accused Russia of blowing up in an “act of terrorism.”

The Kremlin blamed Ukraine, saying it was trying to distract from the launch of a major counteroffensive Moscow says is faltering. Some Russian-installed officials said the dam had collapsed on its own.

Mykola, a 73-year-old pensioner, traipsed down the street towards dry land, soaked from the shoulders down and carrying what few possessions he could save. He said the water in his apartment had been up to his chest.

Minutes later, cracks of incoming artillery sent people running for cover.

Shelter could not be easily found, as water crept silently higher and higher on Kherson’s streets.

On Tuesday evening, Reuters reporters heard four incoming artillery blasts in close proximity to a flooded residential area in southern Kherson from which civilians were evacuating.

Ukraine’s interior minister said earlier Russia was shelling areas from where people were being evacuated, and that two police officers had been wounded.

Kherson, which had a pre-war population of nearly 300,000, was occupied by Russian forces for eight months after Moscow invaded Ukraine last year.

Since it was retaken by Kyiv last November, Kherson has experienced regular heavy shelling from Russian forces across the Dnipro river.

Before she was forced to flee the incoming shelling, 56-year-old Lora, a hydro-meteorologist working for local authorities, was measuring the water level using a depth stick.

Speaking on Tuesday evening, she said the water was 3.5 meters higher than before the dam had collapsed, and that it was still rising, albeit at a slower rate of about 6 cm (2.4 inches) every 30 minutes, about half the rate observed earlier in the day.

“This is an atypical war, unworthy of people. It’s hardly showing the art of war to blow up a dam,” Lora said.

Some locals came to watch the waters rise, while others helped evacuate people from their homes.

Local resident Kostya, 25, was one of those assisting evacuations as homes filled with water, helping a police officer get his young daughter to dry land along a path made precarious by shattered glass from an earlier shelling.

“There are still old people in there, they’re refusing to leave… those homes are filling up with water,” he said, pointing at the old low-rise block he had come from.

Oksana wiped away tears as she unloaded plastic bags full of her belongings from her son-in-law’s car. The 53-year-old woman’s house had been flooded on Tuesday morning. The contents of the bags was all she could save.

“Everything is floating,” she said. “All the furniture, the food in the fridge, all the flowers, it’s all floating. I don’t know what to do.” – Rappler.com

Ukrainian and Russian forces blamed each other for the breach.

The Nova Kakhovka dam, which holds water equal to that in the Great Salt Lake in the US state of Utah, supplies water to Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, and to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, also under Russian control.

The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on Twitter it was closely monitoring the situation but that there was “no immediate nuclear safety risk at (the) plant” which is also in southern Ukraine.

However, Ukraine’s state atomic power agency Energoatom said the water level of the Kakhovka Reservoir was rapidly lowering, posing an “additional threat” to the facility, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

Some 22,000 people living across 14 settlements in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region are at risk of flooding, Russia’s RIA news agency quoted the Moscow-installed head of the region as saying. Kherson is one of five regions, including Crimea, that Moscow claims to have annexed.

Unverified videos on social media showed water surging through the remains of the dam with bystanders expressing their shock. Water levels raced up by meters in a matter of hours.

A Russian-installed official in the town of Nova Kakhovka said on Tuesday residents of around 300 houses had been evacuated, state-owned news agency TASS reported. He said it would likely be impossible to repair the dam.

Counteroffensive

The dam breach came as Ukraine prepares to launch its long-awaited counter-offensive to drive Russian forces from territory they have seized during more than 15 months of fighting.

Russia said it had thwarted another Ukrainian offensive in eastern Donetsk and inflicted heavy losses. It also launched a fresh wave of overnight air strikes on Kyiv. Ukraine said its air defense systems had downed more than 20 cruise missiles on their approach to the capital.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports and it was unclear whether any of the latest fighting marked the beginning of Ukraine’s long-anticipated counter-offensive.

The Southern Command of Ukraine’s military accused Russian forces of blowing up the Nova Kakhovka dam, which is 30 meters (yards) tall and 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) long. It was built in 1956 on the Dnipro river.

“The scale of the destruction, the speed and volumes of water, and the likely areas of inundation are being clarified,” the Ukrainian military said on Facebook.

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency later said on Telegram that Russian forces had blown up the dam “in a panic”, in what it said was “an obvious act of terrorism and a war crime, which will be evidence in an international tribunal”.

Russian news agencies said the dam had been destroyed in shelling while the mayor of Russia-controlled Nova Kahhovka city was quoted as blaming an act of terrorism – Russian shorthand for an attack by Ukraine.

The Russian installed head of the Kherson region said evacuation near the dam had begun and that water would reach critical levels within five hours.

The Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant has been “totally destroyed” and cannot be restored after a detonation inside the engine room, Ukraine’s state hydroelectric company said.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will hold an emergency meeting over the dam blast, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said on Twitter on Tuesday.

Ukrainian attacks

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year in what the Kremlin expected to be a swift operation, but its forces suffered a series of defeats and regrouped in the country’s east.

Tens of thousands of Russian troops dug in over the winter, besieging Bakhmut for months and bracing for an expected Ukrainian counter-attack to try to cut Russia’s so-called land bridge to the Crimean Peninsula.

Ukrainian officials have made no mention of any broad, significant new campaign, although in his nightly address on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was enigmatic, hailing “the news we have been waiting for” and forward moves in Bakhmut in Donetsk.

Russia says it thwarted a major Ukrainian attack in the Donetsk region over the weekend and on Tuesday the defence ministry said a fresh Ukrainian assault had also been repelled.

Russian forces inflicted huge personnel losses on attacking Ukrainian forces and destroyed 28 tanks, including eight Leopard main battle tanks and 109 armored vehicles, it said. Total Ukrainian losses amounted to 1,500 troops.

There was no immediate comment from Kyiv about Russia’s assertions. Russia and Ukraine have often made claims of inflicting heavy human losses on each other which could not be verified.

Writing on Telegram, Russia’s Wagner militia leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said Moscow’s claims of huge Ukrainian losses were “simply wild and absurd science fiction.”

The Washington Post reported that some U.S. officials thought Ukraine’s counter-offensive was underway, but White House national security spokesperson John Kirby declined to comment on whether this was the case.

“I’m not going to be talking for the Ukrainian military,” he told a briefing, adding that the United States had done “everything we could … to make sure that they had all the equipment, the training, the capabilities to be successful.”

The success or failure of a counter-offensive, expected to be waged with billions of dollars worth of advanced Western weaponry, is likely to influence the shape of future Western diplomatic and military support for Ukraine.

In its evening report on Monday, Ukraine’s General Staff made no mention of any large-scale offensive, nor did it suggest any deviation from the usual tempo or scope of fighting along front lines that have not changed significantly for months. – Rappler.com