Ukraine's military has launched attacks on occupying Russian forces in the key southern Zaporizhzhia region, Russian officials and military bloggers say.
They say Ukrainian troops - backed by tanks, artillery and drones - are trying to advance south of the town of Orikhiv for the second night running.
A senior Ukrainian defence official said the enemy was in "active defence".
Several military experts have said the focus of Ukraine's long awaited counter-offensive will be Zaporizhzhia.
They argue Kyiv is trying to regain access to the Sea of Azov, splitting the occupying Russian forces in the region into two detached groupings.
That would not only weaken Russia's combat capability but also eliminate a land bridge to Crimea, the southern peninsula illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.
Ukraine has been planning a counter-offensive for months, but it has wanted as long as possible to train troops and to receive advanced military equipment from Western allies.
The government is deliberately saying little about its plans but its forces are now probing Russian positions at several points along the front line, looking for signs of weakness.
Meanwhile Russian attacks on Ukraine continue. Overnight it launched fresh cruise missile and drone strikes, with falling debris killing at least one person in Zhytomyr to the west of the capital Kyiv.
Heavy fighting in south
Russia seized most of the Zaporizhzhia region soon after President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion in February 2022. However the regional capital, the city of Zaporizhzhia, is controlled by Ukraine.
The recent fierce fighting in the area continued overnight, with several Russian pro-Kremlin military bloggers reporting late on Thursday that Ukraine had resumed attacks, noting the movement of armoured personnel carriers and drones directing artillery fire.
Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed local official, said Russian troops were holding their positions amid "active fighting" towards the city of Tokmak, seen as a key target for Ukraine as it seeks to advance to the Sea of Azov.
It is difficult to verify the competing claims by both sides. Earlier on Thursday Ukraine's Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said Russian forces were currently "in active defence" in Zaporizhzhia and claimed advances were being made around the eastern city of Bakhmut, which has been largely destroyed during months of fighting.
The Zaporizhzhia region is also home to Europe's largest nuclear power plant, which is in an area controlled by Russian forces.
The plant is continuing to receive cooling water from the reservoir of the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro river, despite the dam's destruction on Tuesday which has seen water levels in the reservoir fall and large areas downstream of the dam flooded.
However the resulting emergency is threatening the region's water supplies, with the WHO also warning that cholera could spread.
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Donald Trump on Thursday broke another legal barrier when he became the first former US president ever to be federally indicted.
The Independent has confirmed that a federal grand jury indicted Mr Trump in the investigation into his alleged improper retention of classified documents. According to reports, Mr Trump is facing seven separate counts of criminal activity including conspiracy to obstruct, willful retention of documents, and false statements. He was already under indictment for his role in an alleged scheme to make a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the buildup to the 2016 election.
Trump attorney James Trusty added on CNN that one of the charges relates to Section 1512 of the US criminal code, which covers witness tampering.
Now, Mr Trump is facing yet more legal headaches. In a post to Truth Social, he wrote that he has been summoned to appear at a federal courthouse in Miami to be arraigned next Tuesday at 3pm ET.
Here’s a rundown of what all the legal terminology means and how we might see Mr Trump’s case progress through the criminal justice system.
What is an indictment?
In the American legal system, an indictment is a formal notice that the state believes a person has committed a crime.
A prosecutor secures an indictment by presenting their case to a grand jury, which then votes on whether it believes there is enough evidence to charge a person with a crime.
All proceedings surrounding grand juries are sealed, and the burden of proof for prosecutors is lower than it is at a trial. Typically on 12 of the 16 to 23 grand jurors need to vote to indict a person as opposed to a trial where unanimous verdicts are often required.
An indictment does not determine guilt or innocence, but is a required procedural step in a criminal proceeding.
What is an arraignment?
After the state secures an indictment, it can take a case forward to an arraignment.
At an arraignment hearing, which takes place before a judge, defendants are read the charges facing them and the maximum penalties they carry and then are offered the opportunity to make a plea — either not guilty, no contest, or guilty.
If the defendant pleads guilty or no contest, the case most frequently moves to sentencing. If the defendant pleads not guilty, the judge will set the terms of bail for the defendant and the dates for subsequent events in the case including any pre-trial hearings and an eventual trial, which can sometimes occur months or years after the initial charging date.
So where is Trump in all of this?
The former president has now been indicted twice — once by the Manhattan District Attorney for his role in the alleged hush money scheme, and now by the US Justice Department in Florida for his alleged mishandling of classified documents and obstruction of justice.
Mr Trump was arraigned in New York in the former case in April, and will reportedly be arraigned in Miami in the federal case next Tuesday 13 June. Mr Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges in New York and will enter his plea in Florida when he makes his courthouse appearance there.
Though Mr Trump was arrested in the former case and will be arrested in the coming days in the federal case, he is not expected to be held in jail while awaiting a potential trial. Mr Trump is, of course, running for president again and is the current polling leader for the Republican nomination.
This might not be the last time Mr Trump is indicted this year, either: the former president and several of his advisers are also currently under investigation in Georgia for interfering in the 2020 election.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has hailed what he described as “results” in heavy fighting in Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.
“There is very heavy fighting in Donetsk region,” President Zelensky said in his daily video message, delivered in a train after visiting areas affected by the breach of the Kakhovka power dam.
“But there are results and I am grateful to those who achieved these results. Well done in Bakhmut. Step by step,” he said.
President Zelensky referred to other areas where fighting is going on, but said he would provide no details. Pictures posted on his Telegram account showed him meeting some of the country’s top generals in the field.
It comes as Ukraine sent Western tanks into battle for the first time in a major assault on the southern front that marked the launch of its long-awaited counter-offensive.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has visited the Kherson region that has been affected by flooding after the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam. In a post to Telegram, Ukraine’s president said the main issues discussed during the visit were “the operational situation in the region as a result of the disaster, evacuation of the population from potential flood zones, elimination of the emergency caused by the dam explosion, organisation of life support for the flooded areas”.
Zelenskiy later hailed what he described as “results” in heavy fighting in Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. “There is very heavy fighting in Donetsk region,” Zelenskiy said in his daily video message, delivered in a train after visiting areas affected by the breach of the Kakhovka power dam. “But there are results and I am grateful to those who achieved these results. Well done in Bakhmut. Step by step,” he said.
A substantial Ukrainian force was pushing an assault against Russian positions in the south on Thursday, in an intensification of fighting that some Ukrainian officials and western analysts said marked the start in earnest of Kyiv’s much-vaunted counteroffensive. The combat against Russian positions south of Zaporizhzhia included western-supplied tanks and armoured vehicles and infantry backed by artillery. There were reports of intense fighting outside the town of Tokmak, a key Russian logistical hub.
Russia on Thursday denied Ukrainian accusations that it backed pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and discriminates against ethnic Tatars and Ukrainians in Crimea, accusing Kyiv of “blatant lies” at the UN’s top court.
One of Russia’s longest-serving and most respected human rights campaigners Oleg Orlov went on trial on Thursday, facing the prospect of three years in jail if convicted of repeatedly discrediting Russia’s armed forces, his organisation said.
The cooling pond at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine is in danger of collapseas a result of the destruction of the Kakhovka dam and the draining of its reservoir, according to a French nuclear safety organisation. The UN’s atomic watchdog later said that the plant has months worth of water reserves that can be pumped to the power plant to cool reactors and other areas.
The World Health Organization has rushed emergency supplies to flood-hit parts of Ukraine and are preparing to respond to an array of health risks including trauma, drowning and waterborne diseases such as cholera, officials said on Thursday.
Ukraine could lose several million tons of crops because of flooding caused by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in the south of the country, the Ukrainian agriculture ministry said on Thursday.
Russian shelling killed a civilian in the Ukrainian city of Kherson on Thursday as people were being evacuated because of flooding caused by the collapse of the Kakhovka dam, Ukraine’s prosecutor general claimed. Police reported that an additional three people were injured.
The investigations team of the jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has released a new video in which it claims to have found a son of Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, whose name was previously not known to the public. Over the past year, Shoigu’s alleged son has been making cheesy pop songs in English while his father is sending tens of thousands of Russians to war in Ukraine, the Guardian’s Shaun Walker reported.
Two missiles hit sites near the city of Uman in central Ukraine on Thursday, injuring eight people, the regional governor said. Ihor Taburets, governor of Cherkasy region, wrote on the Telegram messaging app that the missiles hit an industrial site and a car wash in the evening. He said two of the injured were seriously hurt, according to preliminary information.
The Russian embassy has said the responsibility for the “unfolding tragedy” in Kherson due to the destruction of the Kakhovka dam lies with Kyiv and western countries who have supplied Ukraine with weapons, in what they describe as a “terrorist plot” in a statement.
Britain announced a new sanctions package against Belarus on Thursday for its role in facilitating Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including import bans and new measures aimed at preventing internet propaganda.
About 230 square miles (600 sq km) of the Kherson region was under water on Thursday, the regional governor said. Oleksandr Prokudin said 68% of the flooded territory was on the Russian-occupied left bank of the Dnipro River. The average level of flooding in the Kherson region on Thursday morning was 5.61m (18.41ft), he said. He said almost 2,000 people had left flooded territory as of Thursday morning.
Coastline to remain off limits with a ban on swimming, snorkelling and other water sports activities until Sunday.
A Russian man has died after being attacked by a shark off the coast of Egypt’s Red Sea resort city of Hurghada, officials have said.
The Environment Ministry said that the man was killed after being mauled by a tiger shark in the waters near Hurghada on Thursday.
The authorities closed off a 74-kilometre (46-mile) stretch of the coastline, and announced that it will remain off limits with a ban on swimming, snorkelling and other water sports activities until Sunday.
“An attack by a tiger shark on a beachgoer … led to his death,” the ministry posted on Facebook, without providing further details.
A video circulating online, purportedly of the attack, shows a man thrashing about in the water before being repeatedly attacked by a shark circling around him, and then being dragged under.
The ministry later said it had caught the shark and was examining it in a laboratory to try and determine the reasons for the rare attack.
The Russian Consulate in Hurghada identified the man as a Russian citizen but did not give his name.
Russian Consul-General Viktor Voropayev told state-owned TASS news agency that the Egyptian authorities had confirmed to him the death of the Russian national who was born in 1999.
“The victim was not a tourist, but a permanent resident of Egypt,” Voropayev told the news agency.
A diver who arrived on the scene just after the attack said people had rushed to help the victim after a lifeguard from a nearby hotel raised the alarm, but were not able to reach him in time.
History of shark attacks
Egypt’s Red Sea resorts, including Hurghada and Sharm el-Sheikh, boast some of the country’s most renowned beach destinations and are popular with European tourists. Divers are attracted by the steep drop-offs of coral reefs just offshore, which offer a rich and colorful sea life.
Shark attacks are rare in the Red Sea coastal regions.
However, in 2022, there were two fatal attacks in Hurghada within days, killing an Austrian and a Romanian tourist.
In 2018, a Czech tourist was killed by a shark off a Red Sea beach. A German tourist was similarly killed in 2015.
In 2010, a spate of five attacks in five days unusually close to the shore of tourist hot spot Sharm el-Sheikh killed one German and injured four other foreign tourists.
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By James Waterhouse in Kherson & Thomas Mackintosh in London
BBC News
The breaching of a major dam in southern Ukraine will have a catastrophic effect on locating landmines, the Red Cross has warned.
Thousands of people have already been evacuated from parts of the Kherson region as water continues to surge down the Dnipro river which divides Russian and Ukrainian-controlled territory.
Both Ukraine and Russia blame each other for sabotaging the Kakhovka dam.
Three flood-related deaths have been reported in the Russian-held Oleshky.
Yevhen Ryshchuk, the town's exiled Ukrainian mayor, told public broadcaster Suspilne he believed there would be more casualties.
The BBC has been unable to verify claims by Ukrainian and Russian officials.
Erik Tollefsen, head of the Red Cross's weapon contamination unit, warned dislodged mines had sparked major concerns not just for Kherson residents, but also those coming to help.
"We knew where the hazards were," he told AFP news agency. "Now we don't know.
"All we know is that they are somewhere downstream."
Nataliya Humeniuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraine's military South Command, told Ukrainian TV: "Many anti-infantry mines [in Russian-seized areas] have been dislodged, becoming floating mines.
"They pose a great danger," she said, explaining that they were likely to explode if they collided or hit debris.
Reuters
The dam in Russian-controlled Nova Kakhovka was breached in the early hours of Tuesday, leading to mass evacuations as water levels downstream rapidly increased.
Officials say 30 towns and villages along the river have been flooded and nearly 2,000 homes have been submerged in the city of Kherson - the region's capital controlled by Ukraine.
One woman, who arrived in Kherson on a rescue boat from the Russian-occupied east side of the river, explained how quickly the situation escalated after she heard about the disaster early on Tuesday.
"We managed to collect our things but the water kept rising. At that moment I was cooking buckwheat and my feet were already underwater. It started to flood really fast," Kateryna Krupych, 40, told the BBC.
"It feels like we lived a whole life in just one day."
Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said the Ukrainians are developing a plan to help people on both sides of the Dnipro river.
"We are saving everyone on the right [Ukrainian-controlled] bank and developing a plan to help people on the [Russian-held] left bank."
Of the 30 flooded towns and villages, 20 were controlled by Ukraine and 10 were temporarily occupied by Russia, he said.
Mr Klymenko also accused the Russians of leaving "people to fend for themselves".
Rising water levels were expected to peak in Kherson late on Wednesday, but officials fear a catastrophic impact on agriculture as the vast Kakhovka reservoir - upstream of the dam - empties into the Black Sea.
Kherson's regional head Oleksandr Prokudin said 1,700 have so far been evacuated while Kremlin-installed officials on the other side of the river say 1,200 people have been taken to safety.
Officials say more than 40,000 people - 17,000 in Ukraine-held territory west of the Dnipro and 25,000 in the Russian-occupied east - need to leave.
Unicef's Damian Rance said the charity has seen homes completely destroyed as concerns continue to linger around trapped residents.
"Safe water has been impacted in many of these locations as the water supply obviously came from the reservoir there, as has the electricity supplies that have been cut off."
Reuters
President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier on Wednesday that hundreds of thousands of people across the Kherson region were without drinking water.
Both sides blame each other for the destruction of the dam.
Ukraine says it was mined by Russian forces, and accuses Russia of doing little to help people in flooded areas of the Russian-occupied east bank of the river.
America's Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, who chairs the upper chamber's influential Foreign Affairs Committee, told the BBC he was "not certain yet" that Russia was responsible for blowing up the dam.
"But then again the Russians have denied all the actions they've taken against critical infrastructure in Ukraine - and those actions we know have been taken by Russia," he added.
Russia says the damage was caused by Ukrainian shelling, and President Vladimir Putin it "a barbaric act" in a phone call with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
This is just the latest difficulty to hit the city of Kherson. It was occupied by Russian forces soon after the war began last year, but liberated by Ukraine in November. Since then the city has been bombarded with shelling.
Viktoria Yeremenko, 57, told the BBC her house was destroyed in February and she moved to her son's apartment which has now been flooded.
"We managed to get out," she said. "There was panic, we had to leave quickly and grab the dogs. My brother is half paralysed too."
In recent years the Kakhovka dam has become a symbol of leverage between Kyiv and Moscow.
When Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, Kyiv closed down the dam and cut off Ukraine's southern peninsula from a major water supply.
Ukraine has not yet launched a planned counteroffensive to win back territory occupied by Russia, and its start will be obvious to everyone when it happens, a senior security official said on Wednesday.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defence council, dismissed statements by Russian officials who have said the counteroffensive has already begun.
“All of this is not true. When all this will begin, it will be decided by our military,” Danilov told Reuters in an interview. “When we start the counteroffensive, everyone will know about it, they will see it.”
Danilov said Russian officials had mistaken local Ukrainian advances in some frontline areas for the start of the larger operation.
That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, and the Russia-Ukraine war live blog today. Here’s a quick recap of today’s developments:
About 42,000 people are estimated to be at risk from flooding after the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam, a major hydroelectric dam on the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine, on the frontline between Russian and Ukrainian forces. At least people have been confirmed dead as a result of flooding, Ukrainian media outlets reported on Wednesday, citing the exiled mayor of the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky in Kherson region.
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been left “without normal access to drinking water” after the destruction, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has warned. The Ukrainian leader said the evacuation of people and the urgent provision of drinking water were top priorities.
Drone footage showed roads and buildings in Kherson completely submerged by flood water. The critical dam, which lies along the Dnipro River in Ukraine’s Kherson region – now held by Russia – collapsed on Tuesday, flooding a swathe of the war’s frontline.
Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of blowing up the dam on Tuesday. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin on Wednesday accused Kyiv of destroying the Kakhovka dam at the suggestion of the west, in what he called a “barbaric” war crime that escalated the conflict with Moscow.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, told Putin in a phone call on Wednesday that a comprehensive investigation was needed into the destruction of the dam. Erdoğan told Putin that an international commission that includes the UN and Turkey could be formed to look into the issue, a statement from the Turkish president’s office said.
Britain cannot yet say Russia is responsible for the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam, prime minister Rishi Sunak has said on Wednesday. Asked during a visit to the US whether Russia was responsible, Sunak said: “I can’t say that definitively yet” but that “if true […] it will represent a new low. It’s an appalling act of barbarism on Russia’s part.”
The US “cannot say conclusively” who was responsible for the destruction of the dam, national security council spokesperson John Kirby said on Tuesday. “We’re doing the best we can to assess”, he told reporters at the White House, noting “destruction of civilian infrastructure is not allowed by the laws of war”.
President Zelenskiy also accused the occupying Russian authorities in southern Kherson on the left bank of the Dnipro of failing in their duty to evacuate residents, and said Ukraine would appeal to international organisations to assist those people.
The governor of Lviv has issued a public welcome for evacuees from Kherson to come to his region in western Ukraine. Lviv will be sending humanitarian aid to Kherson, Maksym Kozytskyi said in a Telegram post on Wednesday.
France will send aid to Ukraine “to meet immediate needs” after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, President Emmanuel Macron has said following a conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart on Wednesday. Macron said he expressed solidarity with the people of Ukraine in the aftermath of what he described as an “atrocious act which is endangering populations’
A top Moscow-backed official in a part of Ukraine controlled by Russia has said that the collapse of the dam had handed the Russian military a tactical advantage. Vladimir Saldo said he believed Kyiv was to blame for the disaster but that the dam’s destruction and resulting flood waters would make it easier for Russia to defend against any Ukrainian counter-offensive in the area.
Relief workers on the Ukraine-controlled right bank of the river have reported having to work under fire. The UN’s humanitarian aid agency warned the disaster “will likely get worse in the coming hours”, with access to drinking water and health risks associated with contaminated water among the most pressing concerns.
Ukraine has not yet launched a planned counteroffensive to win back territory occupied by Russia, a senior Ukrainian security official said on Wednesday. Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defence council, dismissed statements by Russian officials who have said the counteroffensive has already begun, adding that its start will be obvious to everyone when it happens.
Russia’s defence ministry has said “Ukrainian saboteurs” had blown up a section of the Togliatti-Odesa ammonia pipeline on Monday, which carries fertiliser from Russia to Ukraine in Kharkiv region. There was no immediate comment on the allegations from Ukraine.
A group of Nato countries may be willing to put troops on the ground in Ukraine if member states do not provide tangible security guarantees to Kyiv at the alliances’s summit in Vilnius, the former Nato secretary general Anders Rasmussen has said. Current Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance must discuss options for giving Ukraine security assurances for the time after its war with Russia.
Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg has said he will chair a meeting on Thursday of an emergency coordination panel with Ukraine on the “outrageous destruction” of the Kakhovka dam.
Posting to Twitter earlier on Wednesday, Stoltenberg said he had spoken with Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, about the dam’s destruction, “which is displacing thousands of people and causing an ecological catastrophe”.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has called on international aid organisations to take immediate action to help people in the aftermath of the collapse of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine.
The situation for residents in areas of the Kherson region occupied by Russian troops was “absolutely catastrophic”, Zelenskiy said in his daily video address. He accused Russian forces of having “simply abandoned people in these terrible conditions”, “without rescue, without water, just on the rooftops in flooded communities”.
Zelenskiy said:
We need international organizations, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, to immediately join the rescue operation and help people in the occupied part of Kherson region.
Each person who dies there is a verdict on the existing international architecture and international organizations that have forgotten how to save lives.
The fields of southern Ukraine could “turn into deserts” by next year, the country’s agrarian and food ministry said after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam and the draining of its reservoir, which had irrigated one of the world’s breadbaskets.
Ukrainian emergency services and aid organisations carried out a second day of rescue operations to help the 42,000 people estimated to be at immediate risk from flooding downstream of the dam, including making some forays to the Russian-occupied left bank of the Dnipro River to save people cut off in flooded towns.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the Russian occupation authorities were “not even trying to help people”.
“This once again demonstrates the cynicism with which Russia treats the people whose land it has captured,” Zelenskiy said.
The president also severely criticised the UN and the Red Cross who he said were not helping the relief effort.
Many hours after the disaster, “they aren’t here”, Zelenskiy told Bild, Die Welt and Politico.
At least three people have died as a result of flooding after the destruction of the massive Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine, Ukrainian media outlets are reporting, citing Yevhen Ryshchuk, the exiled mayor of the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky in Kherson region.
The victims are reported to have drowned, the Kyiv Independent reports.
Drone footage from Ukraine showed the extent of flooding in the country’s south, after the region’s Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric station were largely destroyed.
The footage showed roads and buildings in Kherson completely submerged by flood water. The critical dam, which lies along the Dnipro River in Ukraine’s Kherson region – now held by Russia – collapsed on Tuesday, flooding a swathe of the war’s frontline.
Britain has said it will increase funding to the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, by £750,000 to support nuclear safety work in Ukraine.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant gets its cooling water from the reservoir of the Kakhovka dam, which collapsed on Tuesday.
Ukrainian and UN experts have said the dam’s destruction and the draining of the reservoir behind it does not pose an immediate safety threat to the plant further upstream, but warned that it will have long-term implications for its future.
IAEA head Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a statement on Tuesday that “our current assessment is that there is no immediate risk to the safety of the plant.” But there are long-term concerns, both over safety and the possibility of the plant becoming operational again in the coming years.
Reuters reports the UK’s permanent representative to the IAEA, Corinne Kitsell, as saying:
Russia’s barbaric attacks on Ukraine’s civil infrastructure and its illegal control of Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant runs contrary to all international nuclear safety and security norms.
She added:
I commend the work of the IAEA’s staff in Ukraine and I am pleased that the UK’s additional funding will help to facilitate its vital work, particularly given the additional risk posed by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam.
A US expert on the Russian military has said he was sceptical the collapse of the massive Kakhovka dam would hamper Ukraine’s near-term military plans for a counter-offensive.
Michael Kofman, director of the Russian studies programme at the US-based CNA think-tank, said he doubted the dam’s destruction would have a “significant impact on Ukraine’s military operations”. He wrote on Twitter:
The Khakovka dam is at least 100 miles from where much of the activity might take place at its closest point.
He added:
A Ukrainian cross-river operation in southern Kherson, below the dam, was always a risky and therefore low-probability prospect. There is no evidence that such an operation was underway, or would have necessarily been a part of the Ukrainian offensive plans.
A group of Nato countries may be willing to put troops on the ground in Ukraine if member states including the US do not provide tangible security guarantees to Kyiv at the alliances’s summit in Vilnius, the former Nato secretary general Anders Rasmussen has said.
Rasmussen, who has been acting as official adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Ukraine’s place in a future European security architecture, has been touring Europe and Washington to gauge the shifting mood before the critical summit starts on 15 July.
He also warned that even if a group of states did provide Ukraine with security guarantees, others would not allow the issue of Ukraine’s future Nato membership to be kept off the agenda at Vilnius.
He made his remarks as the current Nato chief, Jens Stoltenberg, said the issue of security guarantees would be on the agenda at Vilnius, but added that Nato – under article 5 of the Washington treaty – only provided full-fledged security guarantees to full members.
The US ambassador to Nato, Julianne Smith, said:
We are looking at an array of options to signal that Ukraine is advancing in its relationship with Nato.
The people living along Ukraine’s lower Dnipro River must contend with the immediate consequences of the collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam and flee for safety with whatever they can salvage, but the wider impact could make itself felt for generations.
Downstream, the flood waters will subside somewhat as the surge reaches the Black Sea, but many of the villages and towns along the course of the Dnipro may not be habitable again unless and until a new dam is built. Thousands of homes and livelihoods have been swept away, along with countless domesticated and wild animals.
The ecological trauma of such an inundation of water and silt has changed the landscape in an instant, wiping away islands and wetlands. It could take years if not decades for the fauna and flora to bounce back. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, called it the “largest man-made environmental disaster in Europe in decades”. It is the country’s misfortune to have also been the site of the Chornobyl disaster in 1986, arguably the last calamity on such a scale.
With a reservoir of 18bn cubic metres, Nova Kakhovka was one the dams with the largest capacity in the world, according to Mohammad Heidarzadeh, a senior lecturer in the architecture and civil engineering department at the UK’s University of Bath. It was 90 times bigger than the largest dam reservoir in Britain, the Kielder dam in Northumberland.
Heidarzadeh said:
It is obvious that the failure of this dam will definitely have extensive long-term ecological and environmental negative consequences not only for Ukraine but for neighbouring countries and regions.
Along with all the debris carried along by the rushing waters are tens of thousands of mines. The flood waters are rolling through a frontline in the war. The banks of the Dnipro have been frontlines since at least November, when Ukrainian forces drove the Russians across the river to the southern bank. Both sides laid mines along the waterfront and they have now been washed away and will be distributed randomly in towns, villages and farmland downstream. A flood means civilians can be blown up many kilometres from a conflict zone, many years after the war.
President Joe Biden will host Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, in Washington on 12 June, according to a White House statement.
The pair will discuss support for Ukraine, the statement reads, as well as review preparations for the upcoming Nato summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Here are some images we have received over the news wires from flooded Kherson in southern Ukraine.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has also tweeted about his phone call with Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, following the destruction of the Kakhovka dam.
France “condemns this atrocious act”, Macron wrote, as he pledged to send aid to Ukraine “within the next few hours”.
Macron said:
I expressed to President Zelensky my solidarity with the Ukrainian people after the attack on the Kakhovka dam. France condemns this atrocious act, which is endangering populations. Within the next few hours, we will send aid to meet immediate needs.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said he had a “thorough” phone call with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, to discuss the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine.
Writing on Twitter, Zelenskiy said the pair spoke about “the environmental and humanitarian consequences” of what he described as a “Russian act of terrorism”. He said he also outlined the “urgent needs of Ukraine to eliminate the disaster”.
As we reported earlier, the Ukrainian leader said he was “shocked” by the what he said was the failure of the UN and the Red Cross to help after the destruction of the massive dam.
