Ukraine's Permanent Representative to UN: Attack on HPP is Kremlin's response to calls for peace

Russia's destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP) is a terrorist act against the critical infrastructure of Ukraine, aiming to cause the maximum amount of destruction and victims.

Source: Ukrinform citing Serhii Kyslytsia, Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations 

Quote: "This is a terrorist act against Ukrainian critical infrastructure, that aims to cause as many civilian casualties and as much destruction as possible. By resorting to scorched-earth tactics, or in this case to flooded-earth tactics, the Russian occupiers have effectively recognised that the captured territory does not belong to them, and they are not able to hold these lands."

Details: Kyslytsia said that the terrorist attack on the Kakhovka HPP was previously actively discussed by the occupying forces, Russian propagandists and their Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which indicates that it was planned in advance.

Kyslytsia called Russia's accusations that the dam was allegedly blown up by Ukraine "predictably deceitful". "We have observed the same technique of blaming the victim for your own crimes. There is little chance that a country which desperately denied its war crimes in Mariupol, Bucha, Izium and Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant would acknowledge responsibility for today's technological disaster," he emphasised.

Ukraine’s representative reminded people that the Russian Federation has been controlling the Kakhovka HPP for over a year. "It is physically impossible to blow it up somehow from the outside, by shelling. It was mined by the Russian occupiers, and they blew it up," he noted.

Kyslytsia said that the blowing up of the dam is the Kremlin's response to calls from countries for peace talks with the Russian Federation. He emphasised that Russia has confirmed by its actions that they are not at all interested in de-escalation or peace.

"It [Russia – ed.] must be stopped and rendered harmless, rather than appeased. And that is why Russia’s defeat – a defeat that we will ensure any way – will be the most significant contribution to the security of our region and the entire world," Kyslytsia added.

Read also: Flooded South: the consequences of blowing up the Kakhovka dam (in brief)

Background:

• On the morning of 6 June, Ukraine’s Operational Command Pivden (South) reported that Russian occupation forces had blown up the Kakhovka HPP. The dam and the power plant's turbine hall were completely destroyed. The draining of the Kakhovka Reservoir threatens the safety of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
• Destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant caused an ecological catastrophe. Water from the reservoir has begun to flood towns and villages, and evacuations of local residents from dangerous areas have begun. The blowing up of the dam at the Kakhovka HPP has caused problems with the water supply in the cities of Kryvyi Rih, Marhanets and Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.
• President Volodymyr Zelenskyy emphasised that the recent disaster at the Kakhovka HPP created by the Russians will not stop Ukraine from liberating its own territory, and neither has it increased the chances of the occupiers to stay on this land.

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