For Viktoriia Hrinienkova, life came to a standstill in June 2023. Three of her family members — her mother, father, and grandmother — died in their own home in Hola Prystan, a Ukrainian town in the Russian-occupied part of Kherson Oblast. They were killed in the aftermath of Russia’s destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant’s dam.
The Russian forces controlling the plant blew up its engine room from the inside on June 6, 2023. The dam’s destruction caused severe flooding across dozens of communities in Kherson Oblast. The occupied east bank suffered the most damage, as it was at a lower elevation. Thousands of people still lived there.
Viktoriia learned of the explosion from thousands of kilometers away. She and her family had left the occupied territory a few months after the full-scale invasion, but her parents and grandmother refused to leave. Her father had both legs amputated, and her grandmother was nearly blind. They feared they wouldn’t be able to handle the move to another country and adjust to an unfamiliar place.
From the day of the explosion onward, Viktoriia clung to her phone, desperate for any updates. She stayed in contact with her mother while frantically searching for someone who could rescue her family. She could hear the water rising inside her parents’ house — but she could do nothing. Rescue services in the occupied territory ignored her pleas for help.
“My mom called and said, ‘The water has entered the house. It’s up to our knees. Now we’re sitting on the table. Now we’re on chairs on top of the table. The water is up to our waists. We’re up to our necks in water,’” Viktoriia told me.
The day after the dam’s destruction Viktoriia learned that a boat carrying local residents had reached her family’s house. They heard her family shouting for help. But they couldn’t take them — the boat was already full.
After that, Viktoriia’s mother stopped answering her phone. Presumably, it was that day they died.
I met Viktoriia in her new home in the Czech Republic almost a year and a half after the tragedy. We spoke for nearly an entire day. It was clear how deeply her loss had affected her — how raw the wound still was and how unbearable it was for her to accept that her family had died in such a cruel way.
Among its many methods of warfare, Russia chooses the most ruthless. As it captures Ukrainian cities and villages, it shows no regard for civilians. Human rights investigators who examined the dam explosion found the same patterns of violations and crimes that the Russian military committed in Mariupol, Bucha, and other occupied cities. People were denied safe evacuation, subjected to filtration procedures, and left without access to drinking water and food.
My conversations with witnesses as part of the Kyiv Independent’s War Crimes Investigation Unit’s new documentary confirm this. Over six months of investigation, I spoke with 50 eyewitnesses, relatives of victims, and volunteers who rescued people from the east bank of Kherson Oblast.
One question haunted me — if Russia planned and carried out the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, why did it do nothing to evacuate civilians from the flooded areas? Under international humanitarian law, the occupying authorities are responsible for ensuring the safety of people under their control.
Yet in the first days after the dam’s destruction, local occupation officials denied the scale of the disaster, claiming there was no need for evacuations. Witnesses told me they saw Russian emergency services only days after the explosion — by then, the water had already peaked. And when locals took it upon themselves to rescue neighbors from rooftops, they faced obstacles. Russian soldiers seized their boats, chased them down, and threatened them.
Some families still don’t know where their loved ones are buried. There is evidence suggesting that occupation officials deliberately concealed the true death toll. They reportedly forbade local doctors from issuing death certificates, took control of documentation for the deceased, and transported bodies to unknown locations. It is possible that many of the drowned were buried in mass graves.
Viktoriia showed me a photo of her parents on her phone — a beautiful mother standing among roses, a smiling father, and a grandmother in the backyard of their home.
The next photos were of their graves. They are buried in a cemetery in a town 90 kilometers from their home. A relative of Viktoriia’s found and identified their bodies there. Viktoriia hopes to one day return to Kherson Oblast to rebury her family.
I was conducting my final interviews for this investigation as the U.S. election campaign was heating up and the first reports surfaced about possible negotiations with Russia — about the idea of surrendering occupied territories in exchange for peace.
The publication of this article comes at one of the most uncertain moments for Ukraine and the world. The aggressor is being given a human face, and justice is slipping further and further away.
These days, I can’t stop thinking about Viktoriia and her family. Will she ever be able to visit her parents’ graves? Will those responsible for their brutal deaths ever be held accountable?
Peace will not come until evil is punished.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in the op-ed section are those of the authors and do not purport to reflect the views of the Kyiv Independent.
Roman Shvartsman
