DPA
Kiev
Two days after the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine was destroyed, resulting in water pouring over 600 square kilometres of land, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited residents affected by the floods and said Kiev would help them rebuild.
“We will help you and reconstruct everything that needs to be reconstructed,” he said on Thursday following a visit to the affected areas in Mykolayiv and Kherson, where thousands of people were brought to safety.
Zelensky’s delegation complained that even during the ongoing evacuations, Russian forces had fired from the occupied part of the Kherson region. A man on a lifeboat was seriously injured in the head by the shelling, according to Ukrainian television.
However, relief measures are to be significantly expanded regardless, Zelensky said. In Snihurivka in the Mykolaiv region, a crisis team is to be formed to work around the clock to combat the fallout from the flooding.
“It is important to calculate the damage and provide funds to compensate citizens affected by the disaster,” Zelensky had said earlier in Kherson, where he visited an emergency room for flood victims.
Also needed, he added, is a programme to compensate businesses and relocate them elsewhere in the Kherson region. According to the area’s military administration, many people want to stay in the embattled region despite the flood disaster.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has no plans to visit the Russian-controlled parts of the flood zone, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in Moscow.
Masses of water were continuing to flow out of the reservoir behind the destroyed Kakhovka dam in the embattled southern region. Numerous places are flooded, including the provincial capital, also called Kherson.
According to Ukrainian figures, of the 600 square kilometres currently under water, 32% of it is in Kiev-controlled territory and 68% in Moscow-occupied territory.
