Kakhovka dam destruction: 160,000 birds and over 20,000 wild animals are at risk of death

One hundred sixty thousand birds and more than 20,000 wild animals are under threat of death due to Russia's detonation of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP).

The press service of Ukraine's Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources reports with reference to Minister Ruslan Strilets.

He says the big water is just washing away all our biodiversity. Nine objects of the Emerald network and five Ramsar sites with an area of more than 76,000 hectares are under threat of disappearance.

"It will be almost impossible to restore these ecosystems in their original form, as nature created them. It will take dozens of years. No amount of money in the world will return our unique nature to us," the minister said.

He also drew attention to the fact that the flooding of lands will lead to degradation of the soil cover and erosion and will wash away the entire fertile soil layer into the water, which in turn will not only destroy our fertile soils but also cause pollution of the water resources of the Dnieper River.

Strilets called Ukraine's loss of the most valuable resource – water – one of the consequences of the disaster.

"As of today, we have already lost a third of the water from the Kakhovka reservoir, which was accumulated thanks to the spring flood," he said.

According to the environmental minister, the water quality may deteriorate due to flooding because tons of household waste, destruction waste, and everything accumulated over the years on the coast of the reservoir will enter the Dnieper River and from there into the Black Sea.

He also emphasized that by blowing up the Kakhovka HPP, the Russian occupiers destroyed the possibility of supplying Dnieper water to Crimea because the level of the Kakhovka reservoir is so critical that the water will not reach the North Crimean Canal.

As Rubryka reported, on the night of June 6, Russian invaders blew up the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station, located a few kilometers from the temporarily occupied city of Nova Kakhovka, Ukraine's southern Kherson region.

We will remind you that three people have already died due to flooding in the temporarily occupied Oleshky on the left bank of the Kherson region,

One person also died in the Mykolaiv region due to flooding after the Kakhovska hydroelectric power station explosion.

The Rubryka correspondent also reported that the Russians were shooting at people trying to evacuate in the flooded left-bank Kherson region.

Meanwhile, the water level exceeded the historical maximum in Mykolaiv and the region. Due to the disaster, the Kinburn Spit was cut off from the mainland.