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Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Yahoo
As ‘negotiations' weigh Ukraine's land, the lives lost under Russian occupation are forgotten
For Viktoriia Hrinienkova, life came to a standstill in June 2023. Three of her family members — her mother, father, and grandmother — died in their own home in Hola Prystan, a Ukrainian town in the Russian-occupied part of Kherson Oblast. They were killed in the aftermath of Russia's destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant's dam. The Russian forces controlling the plant blew up its engine room from the inside on June 6, 2023. The dam's destruction caused severe flooding across dozens of communities in Kherson Oblast. The occupied east bank suffered the most damage, as it was at a lower elevation. Thousands of people still lived there. Viktoriia learned of the explosion from thousands of kilometers away. She and her family had left the occupied territory a few months after the full-scale invasion, but her parents and grandmother refused to leave. Her father had both legs amputated, and her grandmother was nearly blind. They feared they wouldn't be able to handle the move to another country and adjust to an unfamiliar place. From the day of the explosion onward, Viktoriia clung to her phone, desperate for any updates. She stayed in contact with her mother while frantically searching for someone who could rescue her family. She could hear the water rising inside her parents' house — but she could do nothing. Rescue services in the occupied territory ignored her pleas for help. 'My mom called and said, 'The water has entered the house. It's up to our knees. Now we're sitting on the table. Now we're on chairs on top of the table. The water is up to our waists. We're up to our necks in water,'' Viktoriia told me. The day after the dam's destruction Viktoriia learned that a boat carrying local residents had reached her family's house. They heard her family shouting for help. But they couldn't take them — the boat was already full. After that, Viktoriia's mother stopped answering her phone. Presumably, it was that day they died. I met Viktoriia in her new home in the Czech Republic almost a year and a half after the tragedy. We spoke for nearly an entire day. It was clear how deeply her loss had affected her — how raw the wound still was and how unbearable it was for her to accept that her family had died in such a cruel way. Among its many methods of warfare, Russia chooses the most ruthless. As it captures Ukrainian cities and villages, it shows no regard for civilians. Human rights investigators who examined the dam explosion found the same patterns of violations and crimes that the Russian military committed in Mariupol, Bucha, and other occupied cities. People were denied safe evacuation, subjected to filtration procedures, and left without access to drinking water and food. My conversations with witnesses as part of the Kyiv Independent's War Crimes Investigation Unit's new documentary confirm this. Over six months of investigation, I spoke with 50 eyewitnesses, relatives of victims, and volunteers who rescued people from the east bank of Kherson Oblast. One question haunted me — if Russia planned and carried out the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, why did it do nothing to evacuate civilians from the flooded areas? Under international humanitarian law, the occupying authorities are responsible for ensuring the safety of people under their control. Yet in the first days after the dam's destruction, local occupation officials denied the scale of the disaster, claiming there was no need for evacuations. Witnesses told me they saw Russian emergency services only days after the explosion — by then, the water had already peaked. And when locals took it upon themselves to rescue neighbors from rooftops, they faced obstacles. Russian soldiers seized their boats, chased them down, and threatened them. Some families still don't know where their loved ones are buried. There is evidence suggesting that occupation officials deliberately concealed the true death toll. They reportedly forbade local doctors from issuing death certificates, took control of documentation for the deceased, and transported bodies to unknown locations. It is possible that many of the drowned were buried in mass graves. Viktoriia showed me a photo of her parents on her phone — a beautiful mother standing among roses, a smiling father, and a grandmother in the backyard of their home. The next photos were of their graves. They are buried in a cemetery in a town 90 kilometers from their home. A relative of Viktoriia's found and identified their bodies there. Viktoriia hopes to one day return to Kherson Oblast to rebury her family. I was conducting my final interviews for this investigation as the U.S. election campaign was heating up and the first reports surfaced about possible negotiations with Russia — about the idea of surrendering occupied territories in exchange for peace. The publication of this article comes at one of the most uncertain moments for Ukraine and the world. The aggressor is being given a human face, and justice is slipping further and further away. These days, I can't stop thinking about Viktoriia and her family. Will she ever be able to visit her parents' graves? Will those responsible for their brutal deaths ever be held accountable? Peace will not come until evil is punished. Editor's Note: The opinions expressed in the op-ed section are those of the authors and do not purport to reflect the views of the Kyiv Independent. Submit an Opinion Read also: Hitler wanted to kill me because I'm Jewish. Putin wants to kill me because I'm Ukrainian We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Russia seized boats, harassed volunteers, concealed gravesites ― Kakhovka Dam explosion investigation
Russian-controlled forces in Kherson Oblast have deliberately made it harder for civilians to evacuate the flood zone following the Russian destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in June 2023. According to an investigation by the Kyiv Independent, the Russian military interfered with the work of locals who were evacuating people from the flooded areas on their own — their boats were confiscated, while the volunteers were threatened and forced to stop the efforts. In turn, the local rescue services, working under occupation, did not have enough resources for the evacuation, while the occupation authorities deliberately concealed the magnitude of the disaster. As a result of these actions, civilians on the occupied east bank of Kherson Oblast that could have been rescued have died. The Kyiv Independent's War Crimes Investigation Unit recorded fifty testimonies from eyewitnesses, relatives of eyewitnesses, and volunteers who stayed in the occupied territories during the flooding following the Kakhovka Dam explosion and were involved in rescuing people. Read also: As 'negotiations' weigh Ukraine's land, the lives lost under Russian occupation are forgotten The testimonies laid the basis for the Kyiv Independent's investigative documentary, When the Water Screams, which premiered on Feb. 27. Following the explosion, the water from the Kakhovka Reservoir began to flood settlements located downstream. On the Ukrainian-controlled part of Kherson Oblast, an immediate evacuation took place, including from the regional capital of Kherson, which saw several neighborhoods being flooded. The Russian-occupied eastern bank of the Dnipro River, however, had been hit the hardest. The witnesses told the Kyiv Independent that they didn't hear announcements about an evacuation. Boats carrying rescuers from the Russian-controlled emergency services did not appear until several days after the explosion. The evacuation of civilians fell on the shoulders of the locals, who organized and coordinated the rescue themselves, in particular, via a Telegram chat. Yet, Russian soldiers did not allow volunteers to enter all the flooded areas, and confiscated their boats under threat of punishment. The Kyiv Independent identified a man from the east bank involved in the rescue operation, who went missing. Volodymyr Saldo, the Russian-installed head of the occupied part of Kherson Oblast, put Andrey Alekseenko, the so-called head of the government of the occupied eastern bank, in charge of the emergency response. Alekseenko is the former mayor of Krasnodar, a Russian city. At the time of the explosion, the local rescue service was headed by Ivan Pavlienko — a Russian Major General. Pavlienko, who had vast experience in dealing with emergency situations in Russia, was in charge of the utility services set to deal with the flooding. However, the resources Russia allocated to combat the disaster were inadequate. In Russia's Ivanovo Oblast, which is almost the same size as the occupied part of Ukraine's Kherson Oblast, there were eight times more personnel and 18 times more "special equipment." A year after the Kakhovka Dam explosion, Russian-controlled official Saldo reported that over 60 people died due to the flooding. According to eyewitnesses and volunteers involved in the evacuation, hundreds of people may have died on the occupied eastern bank of Kherson Oblast, and the authorities attempted to conceal the extent of civilian casualties. When the waters rose, doctors at the Oleshky Polyclinic managed to issue six death certificates, after which they were forbidden from issuing such documents. The bodies of the dead were then taken away. The Kyiv Independent recorded five cases in which the relatives of the victims were not informed about the fate of their deceased, and their burial place remains unknown. Read also: Deer and boar could roam forests in the Kakhovka reservoir in 5 years, head of national reserve says We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
