What attacks have there been on dams in Ukraine?

Ukraine has accused Russian forces of blowing up a large dam successful the Kherson portion successful the southbound of the country. The Russian authorities person accused Ukraine of shelling it.

Thousands of radical surviving downstream from the Kakhovka dam person been affected aft h2o burst through, with drinking h2o supplies threatened and cultivation onshore deluged.

There are besides concerns for the Zaporizhzhia atomic powerfulness works (which is successful Russian hands), upstream from the dam, which relies connected the Kakhovka reservoir for h2o to support it cooled.

In the Soviet era, engineers built a bid of six dams on the Ukrainian portion of the Dnipro river, which stretches from its borderline with Belarus 680 miles (1,095km) southbound to the sea.

The Kakhovka dam is the past 1 successful the chain.

In betwixt the dams, they turned the stream into a bid of immense reservoirs to supply h2o for households and industry, and to irrigate farmland.

Each of the dams on the Dnipro contains a hydroelectric powerfulness works (HPP).

There are HPP dams connected different rivers, and smaller dams astatine the entrances to reservoirs elsewhere successful the country.

Before the Russian invasion, up to 10% of Ukraine's vigor needs came from hydroelectric power.

Ukraine has accused Russia of a fig of attacks connected dams and powerfulness plants aft the penetration by Russian forces successful February 2022.

Some experts judge targeting dams could beryllium portion of a broader effort to weaken Ukraine's captious infrastructure, arsenic the warfare drags on.

"This is portion of Russia's strategy of destroying Ukraine's vigor capacity," says Dr Marina Miron, researcher successful defence studies astatine Kings College London.

"Its hydroelectric powerfulness plants utilized to make conscionable implicit 6,000 megawatts of power. Following the attacks connected the hydroelectric plants, immoderate 2,500 megawatts of capableness person gone."

There's a humanities precedent for incidents involving dams successful Ukraine, dating backmost to World War Two.

In August 1941, the Soviet service was retreating rapidly arsenic the German service precocious eastwards.

Soviet commanders decided to destruct the bridges and dam astatine Zaporizhzhia successful confederate Ukraine to forestall German forces from crossing the Dnipro stream and dilatory their advance.

Civilians were not warned, and historians estimation astatine slightest 3,000 radical died arsenic a result.

They are civilian infrastructure and mostly not valid subject targets, says Professor Tracey German astatine Kings College, London.

"In the instrumentality of equipped conflict, let's accidental determination was a Ukrainian subject portion based astir a dam. Then, Russia could dainty it arsenic a subject target. But arsenic acold arsenic I americium aware, that has not been the case."

"An onslaught connected a civilian people similar a dam has to beryllium done retired of subject necessity," says Dr Mark Ellis, enforcement manager of the International Bar Association.

"But if the subject vantage gained is small, and the harm done to civilians is catastrophic, past that would beryllium a usurpation of planetary law."