Official: Russia blows up small dam in area near counteroffensive operations in Donetsk Oblast

Valeriy Shershen, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Tavria military sector, said in a comment to Ukrainska Pravda news outlet on June 11 that the Russian military had blown up a dam on the Mokri Yaly River in the Donetsk Oblast, causing flooding on both banks.

According to Shershen, this was done in an attempt to “slow down Ukraine's counteroffensive.

However, "this does not affect" the ongoing Ukrainian offensive operations in the sector, Shershen added.

“At first, the occupiers blew up the Karlov (water) reservoir, then the Kakhovka dam, then they blew up other hydraulic structures in the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia Oblast,” he said. “They expect a breakthrough of our defense forces, therefore, in order to slow down our advance, they use this tactic.”

Shershen added that the Ukrainian counteroffensive already has "the first local results,” such as the liberation of the village of Blahodatne in Donetsk Oblast and the advance of the Ukrainian army to the village of Urozhaine in Kherson Oblast.

On June 6, Russia destroyed the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant's dam on the Dnipro River, causing an unprecedented humanitarian and environmental disaster across southern Ukraine. The dam was captured shortly after Russia's all-out invasion on Feb.24, 2022.

“The destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam only confirms for the whole world that they (Russians) must be expelled from every corner of Ukrainian land,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Twitter.

“It’s only Ukraine's victory that will return security. And this victory will come.”

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The Kyiv IndependentFrancis Farrell