The United States, the United Kingdom and France, the three Western powers on the UN Security Council, avoided on Tuesday attributing responsibility for the blowing up of the Kakhovka dam to Ukraine or Russia, although they insisted that without the invasion launched by Moscow this disaster would never have happened.
That was the message that the three countries left at a meeting of the highest decision-making body of the United Nations, called urgently after the destruction of this infrastructure located in the southern region of Kherson and of which Ukraine and Russia accuse each other.
In their speeches, the representatives of Washington, London and Paris stressed the seriousness of the situation and insisted on the idea that all of this, including the dam disaster, derives from the war launched by Moscow more than a year ago.
Speaking to reporters upon their arrival at the meeting, both the US envoy, Robert Wood, and the British, James Kariuki, acknowledged that their countries are currently unaware of who blew up the dam and said that their intelligence services are trying to obtain information. .
The Russian ambassador to the UN, Vasili Nebenzia, insisted before the Security Council that Ukraine was the one who blew up the facility and pointed to the fact that his country already warned the United Nations last year that Kiev had plans to attack Kakhovka.
Nebenzia, in addition, was in favor of the UN investigating the incident and recalled that his country had already sought without success for the international organization to initiate investigations into others such as the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline.
For its part, the White House declared hours before that “we cannot say conclusively who is responsible for the explosion of the Nova Kajovka dam.” Those were the words of the spokesman for the National Security Council, retired Admiral John Kirby, at a press conference held this Tuesday.
Kirby added that “we are working with the Ukrainian government to get more information,” implying that the ultimate responsibility, in any case, lies with Russia for invading its neighbor. “I don’t know if I need to remind you that the Russians illegally captured [the dam] last year and have been occupying it ever since,” she added.
At the insistence of some media about Russia’s motivation to destroy a dam that is practically the only source of drinking water for Crimea – which Moscow has occupied since 2014 – Kirby repeated that “we have not reached any conclusion on this. We are working with the Ukrainians. We are trying to get as much information as we can.”
The National Security Council spokesman also gave that answer when questioned about Moscow’s logic in blowing up its own infrastructure, such as the Nord Stream pipeline, which carried gas from Russia to Germany, last September. The United States believes that the author of the sabotage was Russia, although it has not formally accused that country of the action. Different sources, however, have insisted that the blast was the work of the Ukrainian Special Forces, perhaps with the support of one of the Baltic States or Poland.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project