Both Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of having destroyed – on Monday night – the Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric power station, which has flooded hundreds of square kilometers in the southern region of Kherson. But until this Friday neither party had published evidence of their accusations.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has released a recording of what it claims is a conversation between two Russian soldiers in which the participants say they are aware of the presence of a Russian "group of wilkers" who blew up the dam from Kakhovka “to scare” the Ukrainians.
In the dialogue, the interlocutors begin to talk about the floods and the level of destruction after the blowing up of the hydroelectric power station. "The main problem is that the hydroelectric plant cools its nuclear reactor," says one. "That's good for them. They did it to themselves (referring to the Ukrainians). It will explode and that's it," replies the other.
It is then that the first soldier assures him that "our boys did it, it's not them, it's us." "Really, was it us? They said that the khokhols [derogatory term for Ukrainians] blew it up," replies the second.
“It is not they (the Ukrainians) who have attacked. A sabotage group of ours is there. They wanted to scare them with this prey. It didn't go according to plan, it was worse than they planned”, says the number one soldier in the conversation published by the Kyiv secret service. "[The dam] was built in the 1950s. It fell fast, it fell," he adds, as if to explain why it got out of hand.
In the recording, the two soldiers also describe the flooding, the rising water level and the destruction caused in the Russian-occupied zone by the overflow caused by the destruction of the dam and the hydroelectric power plant of which it was a part.
The Ukrainian intelligence service did not provide further details of the conversation, which has not been verified by any other foreign intelligence office. The conversation coincides with the version of the events that the Ukrainians gave from the beginning, assuring that the blowing up of the dam with explosives could only be carried out from inside the infrastructure, to which only the Russian occupation forces have access. since they took control of the region at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on February 24, 2022.
The recording "confirms that the Kajovka hydroelectric power station was blown up by a sabotage group of the occupiers," the SBU said in a statement. "The invaders wanted to blackmail Ukraine by blowing up the dam and staged a man-made disaster in the south of our country," he added.
The SBU added that it had opened a criminal investigation for war crimes and "ecocide".
Russia has denied any responsibility and accuses "the Kyiv authorities" of destroying the dam.
Hundreds of Ukrainians have been rescued from rooftops in flooded areas since Tuesday. The Ukrainian governor of the southern Kherson region said some 600 square kilometers were under water.
