The Russian administration in Ukraine’s Kherson region said the city of Kherson lost water and electricity after what it called an act of “sabotage”. In a statement on Telegram, the Russian-based Kherson administration said a “terrorist attack” knocked out three power lines in the area. It said the attack was carried out from Ukraine, although it did not provide details. The outage is “a result of an attack organized by the Ukrainian side on the Berislav-Kakhovka highway that saw three concrete poles of high-voltage power lines destroyed,” it said. It is the first time Kherson – which fell to Russian forces days after Moscow invaded Ukraine in February – has experienced such a power outage. Kherson is one of four regions that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed last month. Russia’s state-run TASS news agency quoted Moscow-appointed governor of Kherson Vladimir Saldo as saying there were plans to restore power to the city by the end of the day. Energy experts were working to “quickly” resolve the issue, the Russian-backed authorities said, urging people to “remain calm”. TASS separately cited emergency services in the region as saying 10 settlements, including the city of Kherson, which had a population of 280,000 before the war, had been left without electricity. Russian officials have repeatedly warned civilians in recent weeks to leave Kherson, amid preparations for a Ukrainian offensive against the city, the only regional capital Russia has captured since the February 24 invasion of Ukraine. News of the outage followed reports that the Kakhovka dam in the Russian-controlled Kherson region was “destroyed” by a Ukrainian strike. “Today at 10:00 (08:00 GMT) there was a strike of six HIMARS rockets. Air defense units shot down five missiles, one of which hit a lock of the Kakhovka dam, which was damaged,” Russian news agencies reported, citing local emergency services. The RIA Novosti news agency cited a Moscow-backed local official as saying the damage was not “critical”. Flood threat The Kakhovka hydroelectric dam in southern Ukraine was captured by Moscow forces at the start of their offensive. It supplies water to the Russian-annexed Crimea. Both warring sides have been trading accusations over the Russian-controlled dam for weeks, Al Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett said. “The Ukrainians were saying the Russians were mining it and intended to blow it up, while Russia said Ukrainian forces were planning to fire a missile at it,” Fawcett said, reporting from Kyiv. But if the dam were to be breached, Fawcett said, it would be a major disaster for both sides, “so there’s still a lot of doubt as to whether either would really want to do it.” The dam holds 19 million cubic meters of water and is a short distance from Kherson, Fawcett said. Ukraine has warned in recent weeks that Moscow’s forces intended to blow up the strategic installation to cause flooding. Russian strikes last month destroyed about a third of Ukraine’s power plants, and the government urged Ukrainians to conserve electricity as much as possible. But until now, Ukraine has rarely struck Russian-held civilian energy infrastructure in territory annexed by Moscow, preferring instead to target Russian military supply lines. Saldo said the destruction of the dam will lead to flooding on the left bank of the Dnieper River. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last month that Russian forces had laid mines at the Kakhovka hydroelectric station with the intention of blowing it up. Its destruction could cause flash flooding for hundreds of thousands of people, he warned. He said a water cut in the south could also affect cooling systems at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest.
