Looking back at the Kakhovka Dam explosion one year later (Photos)

KHERSON OBLAST - When Russian forces blew up the Kakhovka Dam on June 6, 2023, they changed the landscape of southern Ukraine permanently.

The breach unleashed nearly 20 cubic kilometers of water from the Kakhovka reservoir, a massive body of freshwater spanning three oblasts. Water levels in several cities in Kherson Oblast rose to 11 meters within hours of the breach, drowning 80 settlements across Ukraine’s south and killing hundreds.

The dam’s destruction has resulted in a humanitarian catastrophe in Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, and Mykolaiv Oblasts. Around 600 kilometers of land was flooded, devastating the rich farmland in the region and threatening long-term economic development.

With 90% of the reservoir drained, 700,000 residents in Ukraine’s warmest oblasts suffered water shortages in the peak of last summer. The Ukrainian government went to work in July 2023 to build a 145-kilometer water pipeline to supply 1.5 million people.

Kherson Oblast was impacted the most with 37,000 houses damaged. The Russian-occupied left bank suffered heavily, housing 68% of the flooded settlements.

Some residents on the left bank were stranded for days waiting for help. On the Ukrainian-controlled side, rescuers evacuated thousands even under heavy shelling from Russian forces.

The economic toll is estimated at $3.8 billion, according to Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Ruslan Strilets. However, calculations are still ongoing and it is not known how bad the situation is in the occupied territories.

Strilets described the act as one of the worst environmental war crimes of the war. The flooding devastated ecosystems, impacted 60,000 hectares of forest, and dragged polluted water into the Black Sea poisoning wildlife.

Replacing the dam will cost $1 billion, head of Ukraine's state-owned energy company Ukrhydroenergo Ihor Syrota the day after the attack. Rebuilding work will take at least six or seven years.

Both Moscow and Kyiv blamed each other for the breach, but experts agree that it was likely a Russian attack. A report from the New York Times claims that explosives were strategically placed in the dam, under Russian control, with help from Soviet-era blueprints and detonated.

Kyiv long anticipated Moscow would carry out the attack. In October 2022 as Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive was underway, President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia was plotting to blow up the dam, saying it would lead to a “large-scale disaster.”