Kakhovka power plant explosion: First victims reported in Russian-controlled Oleshky

The mayor of the occupied city, Yevhen Ryshchuk, told Espreso about this.

"When the Antonivsky bridge was blown up, Russian invaders took away all the boats. There are no boats in the city. People are self-organizing and started to rescue others from the roofs. There is information that the Russians do not let people out of the flooded settlements. They are torturing people. The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations has not joined in to solve people's problems, they are saving themselves. People are gathering in the city center, in the hospital - there are more than 300 people there. People are looking for a shelter, where it would be dry, where they could have a roof over their heads and survive. There are problems with electricity, and there are already problems with drinking water - most people used to take it from wells at home. Now an infection can get there and infect people," he said.

Ryshchuk reported the first deaths as a result of the flooding.

"There is already information about the first deaths in Oleshky. I received confirmed information. It reads: "There is already information about the dead". I don't know how many people," the mayor said.

The explosion of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station

On June 6, occupying Russian forces blew up the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant, completely destroying it. The evacuation of residents of the flooded areas began. After that, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy convened an emergency meeting of the Security and Defense Council, and the world began to respond to the tragedy. Follow the detailed course of events here.

In particular, Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers has allocated UAH 1.5 billion to build two new water mains that will help supply Kryvyi Rih, Nikopol and Marhanets with drinking water. In addition, the Kherson, Mykolaiv, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro regions were allocated almost UAH 846 million to meet the regions' drinking water needs.

And a number of Ukrainian cities have declared their readiness to accept southerners.

Instead, Lieutenant General Serhiy Nayev, commander of the AFU Joint Forces, said that the occupiers' blowing up of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant would not affect the Ukrainian counteroffensive. And the Kyiv HPP is covered from air strikes and protected from enemy subversive reconnaissance groups.

For his part, Ukrhydroenergo CEO Ihor Syrota said that the peak of the water spill from the Kakhovka reservoir is expected in the morning of June 7. According to him, after that the situation will begin to stabilize, and in 4-5 days the water will start to subside.

And the President of Ukraine held a meeting of the supreme military command to discuss the situation at the front, readiness for a counteroffensive, and the Russian explosion of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant. He emphasized that Russia had mined the dam of the hydroelectric power plant last year, and Ukraine was ready for the explosion.

In addition, Volodymyr Zelenskyy discussed the consequences of the hydroelectric power plant explosion and the risks to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant with the IAEA Director General and invited him to Ukraine.

The Ministry of Agrarian Policy has estimated that about 10,000 hectares of agricultural land on the right bank will be flooded as a result of the destruction of the Kakhovka HPP.