KHERSON, Ukraine – Ukrainians abandoned inundated homes on Wednesday as floods crested across the south after the destruction of a huge hydro-electric dam on the front line between Russian and Ukrainian forces, with their presidents trading blame for the disaster.

Residents slogged through flooded streets carrying children on their shoulders, dogs in their arms and belongings in plastic bags, while rescuers used rubber boats to search areas where the waters reached above head height.

Ukraine said the deluge would leave hundreds of thousands of people without access to drinking water, swamp tens of thousands of hectares of agricultural land, and turn at least 500,000ha deprived of irrigation into “deserts”.

Agriculture losses from the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka Dam could be much higher than previously expected because the disaster inflicted “years” of damage to irrigation, Ukraine’s Agriculture Minister Mykola Solsky said on Thursday.

Speaking on national television, he said it was obvious that there would be no water in the region’s irrigation systems for “years” and that to repair them, the dam would have to be restored.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address that it was impossible to predict how many people would die in Russian-occupied areas because of the flooding, urging a “clear and rapid reaction from the world” to support victims.

“The situation in occupied parts of the Kherson region is absolutely catastrophic. The occupiers are abandoning people in frightful conditions. No help, without water, left on the roofs of houses in submerged communities,” he said.

He visited the flood-stricken region on Thursday to assess the scale of devastation.

At least one person was killed after Russian forces shelled Kherson in “targeted strikes” during evacuation efforts amid massive flooding, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General said on Thursday.

“The shelling began precisely during the evacuation of citizens whose homes were flooded,” Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said, adding that eight people had been wounded from the shelling.

Visiting the southeastern city of Kherson downstream from the dam, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said more than 80 settlements had been affected by the disaster, and that the flooding had released chemicals and infectious bacteria into the water.

The destruction of the dam has made it impossible to navigate parts of the Dnipro River and deprived Kyiv of an important agricultural export route, shipping authorities said.

Ukraine is an important global grain and oilseeds producer, but its exports have fallen significantly since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

“The Dnipro River is the main artery of river navigation in Ukraine. And the Kakhovka lock was the last Dnipro lock that let all ships out to the open sea,” Ukraine’s state Shipping Administration said in a statement late on Wednesday. “In fact, the gateway for Ukrainian exports has been blocked.”

The Nova Kakhovka dam collapse on Tuesday occurred amid Ukraine’s preparations for a major counter-offensive against Russia’s invasion, most likely the war’s next major phase. Both sides traded blame for continued shelling across the populated flood zone and warned of drifting landmines unearthed by the flooding.

Kyiv said on Wednesday that its troops in the east had advanced more than a kilometre around the ruined city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, its most explicit claim of progress since Russia reported the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive earlier this week. Russia said it had fought off the assault.

Mr Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said assaults under way were still localised and the full-scale offensive had yet to begin. “When we start (it), everyone will know about it, they will see it,” he told Reuters.

Kyiv said several months ago that the Nova Kakhovka dam had been mined by Russian forces that captured it early in their 15-month-old invasion, and suggested that Moscow blew it up to try to prevent Ukrainian forces from crossing the Dnipro River in their counter-offensive.

Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of destroying the dam at the suggestion of Western supporters, saying it was a “barbaric” war crime that escalated the conflict. Mr Putin described the incident as an “environmental and humanitarian catastrophe”, according to a Kremlin read-out.

Neither side has presented public evidence demonstrating who was responsible. Some experts say the dam may have collapsed due to earlier war damage and poor Russian management.

‘They hate us’

Residents on the Ukrainian-controlled side of the flood zone in the south, a fertile, marshy region stretching to the Dnipro estuary by the Black Sea, blamed the breaching of the dam on Russian troops who held it on the eastern bank of the Dnipro.

“They hate us,” said riverside villager Oleksandr Reva. “They want to destroy a Ukrainian nation and Ukraine itself, and they don’t care by what means because nothing is sacred for them.”

Russia imposed a state of emergency in the areas of Kherson province it controls, where many towns and villages lie in exposed lowlands below the dam.

In the town of Nova Kakhovka next to the dam, main streets submerged in brown water were largely empty of residents.

More than 30,000 cubic m of water was gushing out of the dam’s reservoir every second, and the town was at risk of contamination from the torrent, Russia’s Tass news agency quoted the Russian-installed mayor, Mr Vladimir Leontyev, as saying.

Mr Zelensky said he was “shocked” at what he called the lack of United Nations and Red Cross aid so far for victims of the disaster. Shortly afterwards, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Twitter that “within the next few hours we will send aid to meet immediate needs”.

The UN’s humanitarian affairs office said a team was in Kherson to coordinate relief efforts. Access to drinking water was a major concern, and about 12,000 bottles of water and 10,000 purification tablets had been distributed so far.

Two thousand people have been evacuated from the Ukrainian-controlled part of the flood zone and waters had reached their highest level in 17 settlements with a combined 16,000 people. REUTERS