AN ACT OF TERRORISM: Last October, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia was plotting a “false flag” operation to blow up the country’s largest hydroelectric dam, which would flood a large area of southern Ukraine, including Kherson, and cause a humanitarian and ecological disaster of epic proportions.
“We have information that Russian terrorists mined the dam and aggregates of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant,” Zelensky said in an address to a meeting of the European Council. “The dam of this hydroelectric power plant holds about 18 million cubic meters of water. If Russian terrorists blow up this dam, more than 80 settlements, including Kherson, will be in the zone of rapid flooding. Hundreds, hundreds of thousands of people may be affected. The water supply of a large part of the south of Ukraine may be destroyed.”
Today, as videos circulated showing an explosion taking out a large section of the dam, Zelensky accused Russia of carrying out the plot in a desperate act of terrorism.
“The destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam only confirms for the whole world that they must be expelled from every corner of Ukrainian land. Not a single meter should be left to them, because they use every meter for terror,” Zelensky tweeted, along with a video of water cascading over the broken dam. “It’s only Ukraine's victory that will return security. And this victory will come. The terrorists will not be able to stop Ukraine with water, missiles or anything else.”
‘SHHHHHH’: UKRAINE’S D-DAY ARRIVES: The dam disaster comes as Ukraine’s long-promised counteroffensive began on several fronts under the cloak of an official information blackout.
“Shhhhhh,” was the only message tweeted by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry as reports surfaced of Ukrainian forces advancing in eastern Donetsk province. Those reports included an unverified claimby Russia that Ukraine had suffered “significant losses: more than 250 servicemen, 16 tanks, 24 AFVs, including three Bradley FVs.” One report from the Russian Defense Ministry claimed 1,500 Ukrainian troops have been killed.