The warning about an impending assault on the hydropower facility in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region was issued by Mykhailo Podolyak, an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
‘Russia is preparing man-made catastrophe’
Writing on Twitter on Thursday, Podolyak outlined what he described as “the real plan” by the commander of the Russian forces in Ukraine, Gen. Sergey Surovikin.
According to Podolyak, Surovikin plans first “to mine the dam and transformers” at the Kakhovka hydro plant.
Second, Ukrainians will be forcibly deported from the region, and “disloyal population” will be resettled to Russia, Podolyak said, as cited by the PAP news agency.
Finally, Surovikin’s troops will “flood the territory” in order to “stop the Ukrainian counteroffensive and block their own retreat,” Podolyak stated.
“Russia is preparing a man-made catastrophe,” Podolyak warned.
‘Attack on Kakhovka hydro plant would be the same as using WMD’: Zelensky
Earlier on Thursday, in a video address to a European Union summit in Brussels, Belgium, Ukraine’s Zelensky said he had information that “the aggregates and dam of the Kakhovka HPP were mined by Russian terrorists" in preparation for the Kremlin’s “next terrorist attack.”
He warned that if Russia blew up the Kakhovka dam, “more than 80 settlements will be in the zone of rapid flooding,” including the regional capital Kherson City.
The Ukrainian president appealed for an international observer mission to be sent to the Kakhovka plant.
He told EU leaders: “We must now all together - all Europeans, all world leaders, all international organizations - make it clear to the terrorist state that such a terrorist attack on the Kakhovka HPP will mean exactly the same as using weapons of mass destruction. The consequences for Russia should be appropriate.”
“The world must react preventively,” Zelensky urged. "This is key now."
Russia may want to blow up dam to prevent Ukrainian advances: ISW
Russia’s Surovikin, who assumed command of Russia's forces in Ukraine on October 8, “claimed on October 18 that he has received information that Kyiv intends to strike the dam at the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP), which he alleged would cause destructive flooding in Kherson Oblast,” the Institute for the Study of War reported.
According to experts at the Washington-based think tank, “the Russian military may believe that breaching the dam could cover their retreat from the right bank of the Dnipro River and prevent or delay Ukrainian advances across the river."
Friday is day 240 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, understandingwar.org, president.gov.ua