The Russian shelling of a dam in southern Ukraine is affecting the infrastructure of the city of Kryvyi Rih. The attack did not come as a surprise to residents. A 23-year-old explains why there were no deaths.
When the Russian rockets hit the dam in the southern Ukrainian industrial metropolis Kryvyi Rih early Wednesday evening, Roman was serving a customer at the drinks store where he worked. “I heard loud explosions, the customer was scared too. Everyone started running somewhere.” His workplace is in the center of the city. A few kilometers south of there, the Inhulets River is dammed to form the Karachunivka Reservoir. This is central to the drinking water supply for the residents of Kryvyi Rih. “Then it banged again, a total of six or seven times,” says 23-year-old Roman ntv.de. Parts of the dam were badly damaged.
The attacks by the Russian army have recently been increasingly directed against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. In the east of the country in particular, Moscow’s troops are repeatedly shelling power stations and substations. At the beginning of the week, the city of Kharkiv was temporarily without electricity and running water. President Volodymyr Zelenskyj sees this as an attempt to demoralize the Ukrainian population. “All the occupiers can do is sow panic, create an emergency, leave people without light, heat, water or food,” Zelenskyy writes on Instagram. “Can that break us? Not at all.”
The rocket fire on the dam in Kryvyi Rih – Zelenskyy’s hometown, with which he is still closely connected – leads to failures in the water supply. According to Ukrainian sources, seven or eight missiles were fired from a distance by Russian warplanes. Former Ukraine Minister of Infrastructure Volodymyr Omelyan shared a video on Twitter showing torrential water rushing downstream under a badly damaged bridge. Some parts of the city are at risk of flooding, Ukraine said.
The student Kateryna lives in the district of Karnavatka, around seven kilometers east of the reservoir. She also heard six or seven loud explosions, she says ntv.de. “The tide did not reach me, but I know that the boat station and surrounding buildings of the reservoir were flooded.” The head of the local military administration, Oleksandr Wilkul, writes in his Telegram channel that 112 houses and properties around the reservoir were under water as a result of the dam rupture. Residents of the town of Inhulez on the banks of the river of the same name have been evacuated.
Roman was not surprised by the attacks. “In our city, we expected the Russians to attack the dam.” An acquaintance in the military had warned him about it since the outbreak of war. According to Roman, a quick intervention by the emergency services prevented worse from happening. “The military and the administration were prepared for this. That’s why there were no casualties.” In response, the authorities blew up two more dams to divert the water. Emergency services were able to repair the damaged barrier.
The city also brought barrels of drinking water to the areas affected by the supply outage, says Roman. He doesn’t believe the attack was primarily aimed at flooding the city or cutting off people’s water supplies. “The river is strategically very important. Russia wants to influence our counter-offensive with the attack.” Because further south near Cherson, the Inhulets forms the front line between Ukrainian and Russian troops. Flooding could make crossing the Dnipro tributary difficult. In addition, both sides of the Inhulez use pontoon bridges that can hardly withstand a high tide.
Student Kateryna, on the other hand, is certain that the attack also targeted the residents of Kryvyi Rih. “The Russians want to plunge our city and the whole world into an ecological and economic catastrophe,” says the 22-year-old. “Russia is a terrorist state.”
