Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure are aimed at creating a new wave of refugees.
In a video address to the European Council, Zelensky said that after failing to use energy resources as a weapon against Europe, “the current Russian leadership has ordered to turn the energy system itself into a battlefield. The consequences of this are very dangerous, again for all of us in Europe.”
“Attacks by Russian cruise missiles and Iranian attack drones have destroyed more than a third of our energy infrastructure,” he said. “Unfortunately, this means we can no longer export electricity to help you maintain stability.”
Days of devastating Russian attacks on energy infrastructure have resulted in the country losing at least 40% of its power generation capacity. Ukrainian officials warned earlier this week that both emergency and planned blackouts would follow.
Zelensky added: “Russia is also causing a new wave of migration of Ukrainians to the EU countries. Russia’s terror against our energy facilities is aimed at creating as many problems with electricity and heat in Ukraine as possible this fall and winter and to get as many Ukrainians as possible to leave for your countries.”
Critical dam mined: Zelensky also claimed that Russia was creating grounds for a large-scale catastrophe in southern Ukraine, with Russian forces mining a critical dam on the Dnipro River in the southern region of Kherson, as well as the adjacent hydroelectric power station.
“We have information that Russian terrorists mined the dam and units of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station,” Zelensky said during a video address to the Council of Europe.
“The dam of this hydroelectric power plant contains 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 of thousands of people can suffer. The water supply to much of southern Ukraine could be destroyed. This Russian terrorist attack could leave the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant without water for cooling – water for ZNPP is drawn from the Kakhovka reservoir. “
DailyExpertNews has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry for a response to the allegations.
The dam and hydroelectric power station were operating at a greatly reduced capacity when the area was captured by Russian forces in March. Ukrainian troops are located about 40 kilometers (more than 24 miles) north of the dam. Over the past four months, they have carried out several attacks on the bridge that is part of the dam to prevent its use by the Russian military.
Separately, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said on Twitter on Thursday that Russia planned to mine the dam and transformers, forcing the deportation of Ukrainian citizens from Kherson and the flooding area to avoid the flooding. Ukrainian counter-offensive in the region to stop. The land south and east of the river is low-lying.
“Russia is preparing a man-made catastrophe,” Podolyak said.
What Pro-Moscow Officials Say: The Russian-appointed head of the Nova Kakhovka administrative district, Vladimir Leontiev, told Russian state media TASS that it makes no sense for Russia to destroy the power station dam.
“What’s the point of destroying Russia now? Even formally this is nonsense. This is absolute nonsense,” Leontiev said.
“First of all, you need to think about who benefits from it: it is only beneficial for Ukraine to destroy the dam, the hydroelectric power plant, disrupt logistics, sow fear and panic, the ability to supply water through the North Crimean Canal to the territory of Crimea,” he said, according to TASS.