Explosion of the Kakhovskaya HPP: at least hundreds of people died in the territory occupied by the Russian Federation

At least hundreds of people died during the flood after the Russians blew up the Kakhovskaya HPP in the territory occupied by Russia. The occupying power under the control of the aggressor country significantly and deliberately underestimated the number of victims. It is worth noting that Russia itself stated that 59 people drowned in the territory under its control after the explosion of the Kakhovskaya HPP dam.

The number of dead is at least hundreds in the occupied Oleshki of the Kherson region alone. At that time, the city was one of the most densely populated areas affected by the flood, with about 16,000 inhabitants. The exact death toll in Oleshki and the region in general may never be known, even when Ukrainian forces regain the territory and can conduct an on-the-spot investigation.

The Russian authorities took control of the issuing of death certificates, immediately removing the bodies of people who had not been declared by relatives, and prevented local medical workers and volunteers from dealing with the dead by threatening them.

On June 6, the Russian military blew up the Kakhovskaya HPP dam in the Kherson region. After that, part of the territories of Kherson, Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions were flooded.

According to the Kyiv School of Economics, the amount of direct damage caused by the Russians’ detonation of the Kakhovskaya HPP is at least $2 billion.

According to the data of the National Bank of Ukraine, the undermining of the Kakhovskaya HPP by the Russians primarily has significant humanitarian and ecological consequences for both the affected region and the neighboring ones.