by tyler | Jun 19, 2023 | CNN, europe
Jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny appeared before a Russian court Monday to defend himself against fresh charges of extremism, in a trial that could extend his prison term by decades.
Navalny, already serving sentences totaling 11-and-a-half years in a maximum security facility, was charged in 2021 with the alleged “creation of an extremist community,” according to a report that year from Russian state media TASS.
He and his supporters claim that his arrest and imprisonment were politically motivated, intended to silence his criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In comments posted to his Twitter account, Navalny said the “absurd” charges could lead to him serving a further 30 years behind bars.
Navalny, 47, dressed in black prison garb, appeared at his hearing in person in a court room at the IK-6 penal colony at Melekhovo, around 155 miles east of Moscow.
Journalists were not admitted to the court room, instead having to follow proceedings through a live stream with poor audio quality. Navalny’s communications team has complained about not being able to hear what is being discussed, and called the proceedings an “incredible mess.”
In comments posted on their Telegram account, Navalny’s team criticized the court for organizing a “live streaming with a monstrous sound, where the meaning of what is happening can be guessed only by isolated words, all the while calling the process open.”
His team also alleged that the press secretary of the Moscow City Court thought the meeting was closed, and had failed to get into it.
The proceedings were held behind closed doors because the court voiced “fears of provocations against the participants in the process,” according to TASS.
Sitting at a long table with his lawyers Vadim Kobzev, Olga Mikhailova and Svetlana Davyodva, Navalny asked for his parents to be allowed into the hall. Judge Andrey Suvorov said he will consider the request later.
Navalny’s team challenged judge Andrey Suvorov, and asked him to recuse himself, according to the team’s Telegram posts. It was not immediately clear on what grounds they asked for the recusal. The judge refused the request.
His team also questioned the location of Navalny’s hearing.
“In a normal situation, a person convicted for the period of a new criminal trial is taken from the colony to a pre-trial detention center, and the hearings take place in the courtroom. But with Navalny, of course, it is more beneficial to hold a trial 250 kilometers from Moscow and 70 kilometers from the nearest large city – Vladimir,” the team said on Telegram.
Also present at the hearing is Daniel Kholodny, the former technical director of the Navalny Live YouTube channel, accused in the same extremism case.
Lilia Chanysheva, the former coordinator of Navalny’s headquarters in the western Russian city of Ufa, was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison last week, after being found guilty of “organizing an extremist community.”
Throughout the trial, Chanysheva maintained her innocence.
“I am engaged in ordinary public political activities, to which I have every right under the Constitution,” she said following the announcement of the verdict. “What is illegal is this justice that is happening.”
Navalny has been incarcerated in Russia since his return to the country in January 2021, on charges of violating terms of probation related to a years-old fraud case, which he dismisses as politically motivated.
He had previously been taken from Russia to Germany in August 2020, after he was poisoned with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok. Navalny arrived comatose at a hospital in Berlin, following a medical evacuation flight from the Siberian city of Omsk.
A joint investigation by CNN and the group Bellingcat implicated the Russian Security Service (FSB) in Navalny’s poisoning, piecing together how an elite unit at the agency had followed Navalny’s team throughout a trip to Siberia, when he fell ill.
The investigation also found that this unit, which included chemical weapons experts, had followed Navalny on more than 30 trips to and from Moscow since 2017.
Russia denies involvement in Navalny’s poisoning. Putin himself said in December 2020 that if Russian security services had wanted to kill Navalny, they “would have finished” the job.
by tyler | Jun 13, 2023 | CNN, europe
Russian and Ukrainian forces are reporting intense fighting along the border of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and southern Zaporizhzhia regions as Kyiv’s military attempts to break through the front lines and recapture territory in an ongoing counteroffensive.
The new reports came as Russian missiles attacked the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih early Tuesday, killing at least 11 people and injuring 28, according to Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the Kryvyi Rih city military administration.
Air defenses shot down three cruise missiles over the city but there were also “incomings” that hit civilian infrastructure, authorities said, adding that a five-story apartment building was on fire.
Rescue workers are still trying to reach one person trapped under the rubble of a residential building hit by a missile, according to city officials. A day of mourning has been declared for the victims on Wednesday.
The latest battle reports came from Moscow-backed officials and military bloggers who detailed clashes south of the town of Velyka Novosilka along both sides of the Mokri Yaly River, where Ukrainian forces have made gains in recent days.
Ukraine on Saturday seized several small villages along the river, according to geolocated video. And on Sunday, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister Hanna Maliar said Kyiv’s advances in the area amount to between 5 and 10 kilometers (3 to 6 miles).
Late Monday, a senior Russia-appointed official, Vladimir Rogov, spoke of heavy fighting in an area known as the Vremivka Ridge, claiming that higher ground remained under Russian control.
Rogov, a member of the Russian-installed Zaporizhzhia administration, said on Telegram that Russian attack helicopters were in action, and that in the vicinity of the village of Urozhaine, “reciprocal shelling and heavy fighting of ultra-high intensity continues.”
Rogov conceded that Ukrainian forces were “holding their positions on the northern and eastern outskirts of the village.”
Russian forces are trying to repel Ukraine’s breakthrough with counterattacks, according to the unofficial Russian Telegram channel, Operatsiya Z.
The channel said Monday that Ukrainian forces were trying to take higher ground to “create conditions for advancing,” and assessed that their aim was to advance toward the Russian-occupied hub of Staromlynivka.
Elsewhere Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukrainian Land Forces, said Tuesday that Ukrainian troops have continued “the defense operation in the Bakhmut direction.”
“Our soldiers are advancing, the enemy is losing ground on the flanks,” Syrskyi said.
Ukrainian officials also claim advances towards the direction of the port city of Berdiansk over the past day.
“The area taken under control amounted to three square kilometers,” spokesman for the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Andriy Kovalov, said Tuesday.
In the Donetsk village of Makarivka, Ukrainian forces had “already been driven out by the quick and effective counterattack of the 127th Division,” said Rogov, the Moscow-backed official. CNN cannot independently verify battlefield reports and other accounts paint a gloomier picture for Russian forces around Makarivka.
Ukrainian deputy defense minister Maliar said Monday that Makarivka was one of seven villages recaptured by Ukrainian forces in the past week.
Russian military bloggers have also been reporting intense combat in the area, with one Telegram channel called “Our Donetsk” saying the Ukrainians “managed to deepen and advance through the wooded areas, threatening with further advance to encircle” nearby Russian units.
There is no way to verify these unofficial reports, but they are consistent with a pattern in the fighting that has evolved in the last week.
“Our Donetsk” acknowledged that Russian troops had been forced to abandon Neskuchne – just south of Velyka Novosilka – for a second time, “retreating to positions where they would not be encircled.”
It said the Ukrainians were “accumulating forces” in the area, and heavy fighting continued.
Meanwhile, one of the most prominent Russian bloggers, Voenkor Kotenok, said late Monday that a senior Russian officer was killed as troops of Russia’s Fifth Army were forced to leave Makarivka.
Voenkor, who has 423,000 subscribers, said in a Telegram post that “as a result of an enemy missile attack, the Chief of Staff of the 35th Combined Arms Army, Major General Sergei Goryachev, was killed.”
There is no independent verification of the death of Goryachev, a highly experienced commander, and no word from the Russian Defense Ministry.
Voenkor said that “according to representatives of the command of the United Group of Forces (S), the army has lost today one of the brightest and most effective military leaders.”
Another well-known Russian military blogger, WarGonzo, acknowledged Monday that earlier “victorious statements” about the situation in Makarivka were “premature.”
“The settlement is still a place of fierce fighting…The enemy is bringing in infantry in small groups, using light equipment, which makes it difficult to defeat them quickly,” the blogger said on Telegram.
“Despite expectations, we have failed to retake the village by the end of the day. We hope there will be success in this regard tomorrow.”
By contrast, Russian military bloggers are claiming that Ukrainian efforts to advance south of Orikhiv, in another part of the southern front, have been resisted, with several saying the Ukrainians had lost a significant number of demining tanks in an area known to have been heavily fortified by the Russians with minefields and tank traps.
Geolocated video appears to show Ukrainian armor losses in this area.
“The enemy is doing everything to hold the positions it has captured,” Maliar, the Ukrainian deputy defense minister, said Tuesday.
“It is actively using attack and army aircraft, and is conducting intense artillery fire. During the offensive, our troops face continuous minefields combined with anti-tank ditches. All of this is combined with constant counterattacks by enemy units on armored vehicles and the massive use of ATGMs and kamikaze drones,” she said.
In his nightly address Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the fighting in the Donetsk-Zaporizhzhia border region is tough but Ukrainian forces are recapturing territory.
“The battles are fierce, but we are moving forward, and this is very important. The enemy’s losses are exactly what we need,” Zelensky said.
“Although the weather is unfavorable these days – the rains make our task more difficult – the strength of our warriors still yields results.”
Zelensky also said “the most important and hottest” operational areas are in the Tavria and the Khortytsia directions.
The commander of the Ukrainian Ground Forces and the general of the Tavria operational-strategic group reported “on the success we have achieved, on the front areas where we need to reinforce and on the actions we can take to break more Russian positions,” Zelensky said.
Zelensky’s chief diplomatic adviser Igor Zhovkva told CNN Monday that the “ultimate goal of the counteroffensive campaign is to win back all the territories, including Crimea.”
Zhovkva would not give details on the counteroffensive actions underway.
He also sought to tamp down any expectations that the campaign would achieve rapid results, saying it could take many months for Ukraine to achieve its aims.
by tyler | Jun 8, 2023 | CNN, europe
Four toddlers were hospitalized after a brutal stabbing attack on Thursday in Annecy, France, that triggered a wave of panic in the Alpine town.
Two adults were also injured in the attack, at least one of them requiring surgery, Annecy mayor François Astorg said. The injured were treated in hospitals in Geneva and Grenoble, according to Astorg, who added that some of the children were in a stable condition after leaving the operating theater.
Eyewitnesses described the attacker entering a playground to target the children.
“He jumped (in the playground), started shouting and then went towards the strollers, repeatedly hitting the little ones with a knife,” one eyewitness told CNN affiliate BFMTV.
“Mothers were crying, everybody was running,” another eyewitness told Reuters.
All of the children injured are under the age of 3 years old, Annecy prosecutor Line Bonnet-Mathis said in a press conference Thursday. One child is a Dutch national, according to Bonnet-Mathis, and another is a British national, per UK authorities.
A Syrian asylum-seeker has been detained on suspicion of carrying out the attack, Bonnet-Mathis also said. The suspect was not under the influence of alcohol or other substances at the time of the attack, and there was no apparent terrorist motive.
French media and BFMTV reported that the man was 31 year old, citing police sources. The suspect had legally applied for asylum late last year and on his application described himself to be a “Christian from Syria,” BFMTV also said. He had lived in Sweden for 10 years and applied for asylum status in France, but his request was rejected.
French President Emmanuel Macron said “the nation is in shock,” following the attack.
“Absolute cowardice this morning in a park in Annecy. Children and an adult are between life and death. The nation is in shock. Our thoughts are with them, their families and the emergency services,” Macron tweeted
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the attack was “a truly cowardly act.”
“My thoughts are with all of those affected by the shocking attack in Annecy this morning,” he tweeted. “The UK and France have always stood together against acts of violence, and we do so again today.”
Health Minister François Braun tweeted that his thoughts were with the victims of the knife attack. “All my thoughts go immediately to the people injured by an individual armed with a knife in Annecy, and to their loved ones,” Braun tweeted.
“I salute the rapid mobilization of the emergency services to take care of the victims, and notably the Urgent Medical Aid Service (SAMU).”
Lawmakers in the French National Assembly observed a minute’s silence for those injured in the attack.
French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne will travel to Annecy with Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on Thursday, according to the interior ministry.
by tyler | Jun 8, 2023 | CNN, europe
The collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine is one of the biggest industrial and ecological disasters in Europe for decades. The catastrophe has destroyed entire villages, flooded farmland, deprived tens of thousands of people of power and clean water, and caused massive environmental damage.
It’s still impossible to say whether the dam collapsed because it was deliberately targeted or if the breach could have been caused by structural failure. The dam and hydroelectric power plant are under Russian control and therefore inaccessible to independent investigators, leaving experts around the world trying to piece together what happened based on limited visual evidence.
Several Western officials have blamed Russia for the disaster, either directly accusing Moscow of targeting the dam or saying that Russia is responsible simply because it is the aggressor in the war on Ukraine.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres described the destruction as “another devastating consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” but added that the UN doesn’t have access to information to independently verify the cause.
A NATO military official told CNN that, while it will take some time before they know for certain who was responsible for the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in Ukraine, they believe Russia was likely behind it. The official added that Russia stood the most to gain by the move, which could potentially slow down an anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive, if it were to take place in that part of the country.
A number of civil engineering experts have suggested that an explosion inside the structure is the most likely cause of the dam breach, although it’s not the only possible explanation.
Here are the three main theories on what caused the collapse – and what experts and officials say about each:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, his government and the country’s military were quick to blame Moscow for the disaster. They said Russian forces blew up the reservoir from inside, with Zelensky quoting a report by Ukrainian intelligence last year that claimed occupying troops had mined the dam.
The Ukrainians point out that the facility has been under Russian control for the past year, making it easy for Russian forces to plant explosives.
Social media posts indicate that people in the area heard the sound of explosions around the time the dam was thought to have been damaged.
The wider timing of the incident is not insignificant. While Moscow and Kyiv have previously accused each other of plotting to blow up the Soviet-era dam, this collapse coincided with Ukrainian forces gearing up for their widely expected summer counter-offensive.
The dam spans the Dnipro River, a major waterway that has become a front line in the conflict and the scene of heavy fighting in this part of southern Ukraine. The city of Kherson, which sits on the west bank of the Dnipro river, was liberated by the Ukrainian military in November after eight months of Russian occupation. But much of the east bank of the river south of the Nova Kakhovka dam remains under Russian control.
Ukraine’s forces have increasingly taken the battle to Russia’s entrenched front lines in the south and east, and Kyiv has accused Russia of blowing up the dam “in panic.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior aide to Zelensky, said “the terrorists’ goal is obvious – to create obstacles for the offensive actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”
“This once again confirms that the Kremlin is not thinking strategically, but rather in terms of short-term situational advantages. But the consequences are already catastrophic,” he told CNN.
The damage is also affecting the area north of the reservoir, where water levels are falling. The collapse has left 94% of irrigation systems in Kherson, 74% in Zaporizhzhia and 30% in Dnipro regions “without a source of water,” according to the Ukrainian Agricultural Ministry.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant also lies upstream from the destroyed dam. The reservoir supplies cooling water to the plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power station, and is crucial for its safety. The plant is under Russian control, which has been a major source of anxiety for the Ukrainians, still scared by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
Russia has denied any involvement in the disaster and in turn accused Ukraine of destroying the dam, without providing evidence.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed the attack was “planned and carried out by order received from Kyiv, from the Kyiv regime,” aiming to “deprive Crimea of water” and to distract from the battlefield. Ukraine has denied the accusations.
The reservoir supplies water to large swaths of southern Ukraine, including to the Crimean peninsula which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
Crimea has experienced water issues ever since Ukraine cut its supply shortly after the annexation. Russian forces captured the North Crimea Canal – which is fed by the Kakhovka reservoir – and began restoring the water supply in the first days of their invasion in 2022.
While the flooding will likely affect any counteroffensive by Ukraine, it’s also impacting Russian forces. Some of the areas worst hit by the disaster are under Russia’s control and have in the past served as staging grounds for Moscow’s military.
There are also suggestions that the dam collapse took at least some Russian forces by surprise.
An officer in Ukraine’s armed forces told CNN that his men witnessed Russian soldiers being swept up in flood waters and fleeing the east bank of the Dnipro River. Capt. Andrei Pidlisnyi told CNN in a telephone interview that when the dam burst in the early hours of Tuesday morning, “no one on the Russian side was able to get away. All the regiments the Russians had on that side were flooded.” CNN cannot independently verify his account.
Russia has accused Ukraine of launching “mass artillery attacks” on the dam, but some experts question whether it would even be possible to cause destruction on this scale from the outside.
Several experts said an internal explosion was a more likely explanation.
“Shelling by Ukraine is highly unlikely as it would need to get massive explosives close to the foundations,” Chris Binnie, a visiting professor at University of Exeter and the chair of Tidal Engineering and Environmental Services, told the UK Science Media Centre.
Craig Goff, the technical director and lead of the Dams and Reservoirs team at HR Wallingford, a civil engineering and environmental hydraulics consultancy, said inflicting enough damage on the dam would require a very precise strike.
“Back in the Second World War, there were the [Royal Air Force] Dambusters attacks on German dams and they had to spend a lot of time working out exactly where to place explosives on the dam in order to cause enough damage to cause it to breach,” he told CNN.
“It wasn’t a simple thing. You had to get the explosives right down on the upstream side of the dam at a deep depth. If it was just the top off the dam then it would probably still survive. You’d lose a bit of water but it would survive,” Goff said.
The Nova Kakhovka dam – the largest reservoir in Ukraine in terms of volume – is also the furthest downstream of a cascade of six Soviet-era dams on the Dnipro River. The fact that the facility has been operating for many decades has prompted speculation around a possible technical failure.
“The section of dam that we’re looking at is a concrete gravity dam, 35 meters high and 85 meters long (115 feet high and 279 feet long). This is a very common type of dam all around the world. They’ve been built for hundreds of years and if they were designed and built well and are maintained adequately, then the chance of a failure is very, very low. It would be extremely unusual for this type of dam to fail with no warning,” Goff said.
However it is unclear how well the dam has been maintained under Russian occupation. The surrounding area has been one of the most heavily contested regions since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the dam has sustained some prior damage.
Sections of the northern part of the dam and some sluice gates were also impacted in an explosion in November as the Russian military retreated from the west bank of the Dnipro and Kherson was liberated by Ukrainian troops.
A CNN analysis of satellite imagery from Maxar shows the road above the dam was damaged just days before the structural collapse. The satellite images show the bridge was intact on May 28 but imagery from June 5 shows a section of the same bridge missing. Analysis of lower resolution satellite imagery suggests the loss of the bridge section took place between June 1 and 2.
Meanwhile, data shows water levels in the reservoir behind the dam were at record highs last month, according to the Hydroweb information service.
“The images I have seen show two breaches, either side of a structure. Were the breach to be caused by excess upstream water level there would only be one. Thus natural causes are highly unlikely,” Binnie said.
“The design of the dam will take into account these very high water levels, even extreme, biblical type flooding and there will be spillways to allow the water to go over. So again, the dam shouldn’t fail just because of high water levels,” Goff added.
Experts are also considering whether a failure inside the power plant could have caused the collapse. Goff pointed to the 2009 explosion at the Sayano-Shushenskaya station, the largest hydroelectric plant in Russia. “In that particular case, there was a problem with one of the turbines. It vibrated and eventually the turbine exploded. And that killed people inside the power house, but it didn’t affect the dam on that in that instance, because of the way the dam was built,” he said.
“It is possible that if the hydropower station was at a critical point inside the dam and that something bad happened in that power house that possibly could have caused an explosion inside that would damage the dam,” Goff said. He added, however, that it would be “extremely unlikely” for such an accident to happen without advance warning.
“You would know how to operate the dam safely and you would know that the turbines shouldn’t be vibrating that much… so if it was being looked after properly, you can probably rule that one out,” he said.
But as the plant had been under Russian control for over a year, no one can be sure what was happening inside during that time, and it’s far from certain if those who operated it knew what they were doing.
by tyler | Jun 8, 2023 | CNN, europe
An Air India flight sent to the remote Russian city of Magadan to pick up its stranded passengers has landed safely in San Francisco, the airline said Thursday.
“All our passengers are being extended maximum on-ground assistance with clearance formalities and provided other necessary support,” Air India wrote on Twitter.
Earlier in the week, an Air India flight AI173 from New Delhi to San Francisco had been diverted due to a technical issue with one of the plane’s engines. It landed in Russia’s Magadan airport, in the country’s far east, carrying 216 passengers and 16 crew.
In a statement Wednesday, Air India said a “ferry flight” took off from Mumbai to take the passengers to San Francisco subject to “necessary clearances.”
There are no Air India staff in the remote town of Magadan. Instead, the airline said support was provided to the passengers through “round-the-clock liaison” with the Consulate General of India in Vladivostok, a city about 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) south of Magadan, as well as India’s Ministry of External Affairs, local ground handlers and Russian authorities.
Russia has banned numerous western countries from operating in its airspace, though some carriers like Air India continue to fly over Russia.
The United States said earlier this week that it was monitoring the situation. “We are aware of a US-bound flight that had to make an emergency landing in Russia, and are continuing to monitor that situation closely,” said State Department Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel.
While Patel could not confirm how many US citizens were on the flight, he said it was “of course likely that there are American citizens on board.”
Patel also said it would be possible if needed for the US to take steps “in assessing manifests and passengers who may be bound for the United States.”
Patel would not say if the US would need to exempt any replacement parts for the plane from sanctions on Russia.
The diversion came amid a debate about the use of Russian airspace by some carriers.
Air India’s CEO defended its use of Russian airspace on Monday, telling an airline summit that “we operate in the accordance within the ambit of what’s provided to us by the nation of India.”
He added: “Not all nations agree. And so there are going to be different outcomes as a consequence. I think we’ve seen over the past few years the consequence of aviation not being able to connect people and economies and cultures and support all of the other things that we spin off.”
Meanwhile, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby on Monday predicted possible dangers of a plane being forced to land in Russia with American citizens on board while speaking to reporters, Reuters reported.
by tyler | Jun 8, 2023 | CNN, europe
Russian forces have been shooting at Ukrainian rescuers trying to reach flooded areas in the Kherson region that are under Russian control, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday.
Rescuers are trying to evacuate thousands of people in the flood zone of the Russian-occupied Nova Kakhovka dam and hydro-electric power plant, which collapsed on Tuesday sending torrents of water gushing down the Dnipro River.
At least eight people have died in flooding in the region so far, according to Ukrainian and Russian officials.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov made his own claims on the rescue efforts Thursday, telling a conference call with journalists that occupied parts of the Kherson region are still coming under Ukrainian fire as rescue workers try to help people out of flooded areas there.
Asked whether Russian President Vladimir Putin was planning to visit communities affecting by the flooding, Peskov said he had no such plans.
Zelensky made his comments in an exclusive interview with German tabloid newspaper Bild published Wednesday.
“People, animals have died. From the roofs of the flooded houses, people see drowned people floating by. You can see that on the other side. It is very difficult to get people out of the occupied part of Kherson region,” Zelensky said.
“When our forces try to get them [the residents] out, they are shot at by occupiers from a distance,” Zelensky told Bild. “As soon as our helpers try to rescue them, they are shot at. We won’t be able to see all the consequences until a few days from now, when the water has trickled down a bit.”
The international humanitarian organization CARE cautioned that landmines are likely floating in the floods unleashed by the dam collapse.
“The area where the Kakhovka dam was, is full of landmines, which are now floating in the water and are posing a huge risk,” Fabrice Martin, country director at CARE Ukraine, said in a statement.
At least five people have died in the flooding in the Russian-occupied town of Nova Kakhovka, which sits some five kilometers (three miles) from the collapsed dam, a Kremlin-backed official was quoted by Russian state news agency TASS as saying.
“It was reported that out of seven people who were grazing cattle, five drowned,” Vladimir Leontiev, head of the Nova Kakhovka city administration, told Russian television according to TASS.
“The most difficult situation is in Aleshki [the Russian spelling of ‘Oleshky’] and Hola Prystan,” another official installed by the Kremlin in occupied territory on the east bank of the Dnipro River said on Telegram. Oleshky lies around 70 kilometers west of Nova Kakhovka, and Hola Prystan some 20 kilometers beyond that.
Oleshky’s exiled Ukrainian mayor Yevhen Ryshchuk told CNN earlier Thursday that at least three people have died in the town after water flooded “about 90% of it.”
“Three people drowned there. We do not know how many more dead people there will be. I think there might be many more,” Ryshchuk said.
Between 3,500 and 4,000 people still lived in Oleshky, including “many pensioners and bedridden people,” the mayor added.
On Wednesday, a volunteer taking part in the rescue efforts in Kherson told CNN volunteers face Russian shelling on nearly every sortie.
“Of course it is extremely dangerous,” said Roman Skabdrakov from the Kaiman Volunteer Group.
The destruction of the dam and subsequent flooding forced more than 1,800 people to flee their homes, inundated thousands of hectares of farmland, threatened vital water supplies and prompted warnings of catastrophic environmental damage from Ukrainian officials and experts.
Kyiv and Moscow have traded accusations over the dam’s destruction, without providing concrete proof that the other is culpable. The dam was occupied by Russia at the time of its collapse. It is not yet clear whether the dam was deliberately attacked or whether the breach was the result of structural failure.
Video published by the Ukrainian military shows drinking water being dropped to residents affected by the flooding in Russian-occupied areas of Kherson.
Military drone footage, reportedly of the city of Oleshky, appears to show a family trapped in their flooded house and pleading for help. The video shows one resident standing in the skylight of a house that’s surrounded by floodwaters and catching a water bottle dropped from the drone.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal claimed occupying Russian forces have offered “no help” to residents in flooded areas. He said residents in occupied areas of Kherson “have been abandoned by the Russians” and “left to perish” as homes “vanish beneath the water.”
President Zelensky described the situation in Russian-occupied areas as “absolutely catastrophic.”
“The occupiers simply abandoned people in these terrible conditions. Without rescue, without water, just on the roofs of houses in flooded communities,” he said Wednesday.
Both Zelensky and Shmyhal appealed directly to the United Nations and international humanitarian organizations to take charge of evacuating people from the Russian-occupied areas of Kherson.
Zelensky called for a “clear and swift” humanitarian response, saying it’s difficult to know “how many people in the temporarily occupied territory of Kherson region may die without rescue, without drinking water, without food, without medical care.”
He said Ukraine’s military and emergency services “are rescuing as many people as possible,” despite Russian shelling.
“But more efforts are needed,” Zelensky said.
UN humanitarian officials visited Kherson on Wednesday to “coordinate the humanitarian response” alongside local organizations and authorities, the body’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a news release.
“They said the disaster will likely get worse in the coming hours, with water levels still rising and more villages and towns being flooded,” the UN said. “This will impact people’s access to essential services and raises serious health risks.”
Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the Kherson regional military administration who has been overseeing rescue efforts, said they expect water levels to “stay and accumulate for another day and then gradually decrease for another five days.”
At least 1,854 people have been evacuated since Tuesday as rescue efforts to free people from their flooded homes in Ukrainian-controlled Kherson continued throughout Wednesday, Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs said.
The ministry said it was also looking for ways to evacuate citizens from the Russian occupied-eastern bank of the Dnipro River.
“We are trying to do it as quickly as possible. We are hampered by a strong current and shelling by the Russian military,” said Internal Affairs Minister Ihor Klymenko.
Conditions for residents in flooded areas are dire, with “hundreds of thousands of people left without normal access to drinking water,” Zelensky said.
The city of Kherson was under Russian occupation for eight months and continues to face shelling from Russian forces on the other side of the river.
Despite the threats from floods and shelling, aid workers told CNN some residents are determined to stay in their flooded homes rather than be evacuated.
Many of them are elderly and some have experienced more than a year of conflict or have recently returned to their homes and are “less willing to leave because of flooding,” said Selena Kozakijevic, Ukraine area manager CARE.
Kozakijevic said some of the local partners CARE has been working with have received calls from people in occupied areas saying they are struggling to find assistance and requesting support.
“Unfortunately, the left bank of the river is not accessible from the right side and this is the primary reason why, from the Ukrainian-controlled areas, the assistance at the moment is not passing to the other side,” she said.
