▲ Photos of the flooding site released by Paulo Kirilenko


Russia has blown up a dam in eastern Ukraine, using floodwater as a weapon, The New York Times (NYT) reported.

Ukrainian military authorities say Russian forces launched a missile strike on the sluice gates of the Karlivka dam in the eastern Donetsk region, cutting off supply routes downstream.

The head of the Donetsk Oblast military administration, Paulo Kirilenko, took to Telegram to publish a video of torrents pouring out of the destroyed dam.

Local authorities said they had evacuated 26 residents and issued a flood warning for the village of the lower Bowcha River.

Kirilenko said Russia has been "relentlessly bombarding" the dam over the past few months, and that "mainly civilians will suffer."

The NYT reports that the attack flooded the area of the military operation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near the front line, and the area downstream of the dam was sealed off due to "security concerns."

A spokesman for the 59th Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which is conducting military operations in the affected areas, noted that "Russia's actions are predictable" and that "they do the same thing over and over again."

In fact, even in September last year, Russia fired several missiles at a dam near Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine, bombing one of the two floodgates.

At the time, Ukrainian authorities claimed that Russia carried out these attacks in order to clear a Ukrainian military pontoon bridge in the lower reaches of the Inhulets River.

As a result, the pontoon bridge was undamaged, but the water level of the Inhulets River rose by 9 meters at one point, and parts of Kryvyi Rih were submerged.

Russia used a total of seven Iskander missiles and Kinzhal missiles in the attack, suggesting the military value of the dam bombing, according to the NYT.

The Ukrainian government has repeatedly highlighted the danger of Russia blowing up a hydroelectric dam on the Dnipro River, releasing water from the Kahouka reservoir.

The Ukrainian side claimed that it was to flood residential areas and military bases downstream, or to threaten the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which draws cooling water from reservoirs.

Ukrainian officials have claimed that Russia, which controls the floodgates by occupying the eastern bank of the Kahouka dam site, is already manipulating the reservoir level for unknown reasons.

The explanation is that last winter, when reservoir levels fell to their lowest level in 2 years, upstream villages in Ukraine struggled with water supplies, and in the spring water levels were left to rise to dangerous levels.

According to French global data firm Theia, the water level in the Kahouka reservoir has recently risen to its highest level in 1 years, increasing the likelihood of flooding.

In the early days of the war, Ukrainian forces also blew up the floodgates of a dam to block Russian tanks from entering Kyiv and buy time to prepare for defense, flooding the Irpin River valley, which flooded dozens of homes.

(Photo = Paulo Kirilenko Telegram capture, Yonhap News)