Russian troops allegedly intimidated Ukrainian civilians into evacuating by threatening to blow up a hydroelectric dam on the Dnipro River, Ukraine said Tuesday.
“The occupiers continue to forcibly relocate the civilian population to the temporarily occupied territories of Kherson Oblast,” the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a Facebook post. “The enemy resorts to intimidation of civilian residents, spreading data about the imaginable sabotage of the Kakhovska HPP dam. At the same time, the local population is disadvantaged by the media. “
The two sides have accused the other of making plans to blow up the plant, a dam that pumps water into Crimea’s northern canal and could cause major flooding in southern Ukraine and across the Crimean peninsula.
Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of the Kakhovka dam and warned that such a move would cause a “large-scale catastrophe. “
“The dam of this hydroelectric plant has a volume of about 18 million cubic meters of water,” Zelensky said in a speech. “If Russian terrorists blow up this dam, more than 80 settlements, Kherson adding, will be in the immediate flood zone. Hundreds of thousands of other people may be affected. “
The Kremlin, which has refuted Zelensky’s claims as “lies,” also blamed Ukraine for the Russian-occupied hydroelectric plant, saying Ukrainian forces were firing missiles at the dam, one of the few remaining routes across the key river.
On Tuesday, Ukraine reported that Russia introduced 4 more missiles and 26 airstrikes, which hit more than 20 other settlements, adding Mykilske from Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Poltava, Kramatorsk, Nikopol and Mykolaiv.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Kyiv carried out 22 movements and the resources of the Kremlin army continued to be exhausted more than 8 full months after the Russian invasion.
“The command of the profession seeks to compensate for the constant loss of the body of workers in enemy sets directly engaged in hostilities on the territory of Ukraine with mobilized military,” Ukraine said. “With those who refuse to participate in combat operations. “, the so-called ‘work’ is carried out through workers of the [Federal Security Service] of the Russian Federation. “
The U. S. think tank. U. S. The Institute for the Study of War has warned that Russia favors a false flag attack on the Kakhovka Dam by creating situations that would warrant a resolution to blow up the plant after Moscow’s withdrawal from the Kherson region. It would also pave the way for Russia to blame Ukraine for the flooding, the think tank said.
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