LAST UPDATE | 10 Jun 2023

UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR Zelenskyy said today that counteroffensive action was underway against Russian forces, while declining to give any details.

“Counteroffensive and defensive actions are taking place in Ukraine: at which stage I will not talk in detail,” Zelenskyy said at a joint press conference in Kyiv with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The United Nation’s top aid official warned today that the humanitarian situation in Ukraine is “hugely worse” following the collapse of the Kakhovka dam.

Undersecretary-general Martin Griffiths said an “extraordinary” 700,000 people are in need of drinking water and warned that the ravages of flooding in one of the world’s most important breadbaskets will almost inevitably lead to lower grain exports, higher food prices around the world, and less to eat for millions in need.

“This is a viral problem,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. “But the truth is this is only the beginning of seeing the consequences of this act.”

The rupture of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam and emptying of its reservoir on the Dnieper River on Wednesday added to the misery in a region that has suffered for more than a year from artillery and missile attacks.

Ukraine holds the Dnieper’s western bank, while Russian troops control the low-lying eastern side, which is more vulnerable to flooding.

The dam and reservoir, essential for fresh water and irrigation in southern Ukraine, lies in the Kherson region that Moscow illegally annexed in September and has occupied for the past year.

Griffiths said the United Nations, working mainly through Ukrainian aid groups, has reached 30,000 people in flooded areas under Ukrainian control. He said that so far Russia has not given access to areas it controls for the UN to help flood victims.

Griffiths said he met with Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, on Wednesday to ask Russian authorities “for access for our teams in Ukraine to go across the front lines to give aid, to provide support for… Ukrainians in those areas”.

“We’re providing them with details as we speak, to enable Moscow to meet what we hope will be a positive decision on this,” he said. “I hope that will come through.”

The emergency response is essential to save lives, he said, “but behind that you’ve got a huge, looming problem of a lack of proper drinking water for those 700,000 people” on both the Ukrainian-controlled and Russian-controlled sides of the river.

There is also the flooding of important agricultural land and a looming problem of providing cooling water for the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, which had been supplied from the dam, he added.

In addition, Griffiths noted that waters also have rushed over areas with land mines from the war “and what we are bound to be seeing are those mines floating in places where people don’t expect them”, threatening adults and especially children.

“So it’s a cascade of problems, starting with allowing people to survive today, and then giving them some kind of prospects for tomorrow,” he said.

 Griffiths said that because of the wide-ranging consequences “it’s almost inevitable” that the United Nations will launch a special appeal for more aid funds for Ukraine to deal with “a whole new order of magnitude” from the dam’s rupture.

But he said he wants to wait a few weeks to see the economic, health and environmental consequences before announcing the appeal.

Griffiths and UN trade chief Rebeca Grynspan are working to ensure the extension of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which Turkey and the UN brokered with Ukraine and Russia last July to open three Black Sea ports in Ukraine for its grain exports.

More than 30,000 metric tons of wheat and other foodstuff has been shipped under the deal, leading to a decline in global food prices that skyrocketed after Russia’s February 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine.

It has been extended three times and is due to expire on17  July.

Part of the deal was a memorandum signed by Russia and the UN aimed at overcoming obstacles to Russian food and fertiliser shipments that Moscow has repeatedly complained are not being fulfilled.

A key Russian demand has been the reopening of a pipeline between the Russian port of Togliatti on the Volga River and the Black Sea port of Odesa that has been shut down since Russia’s attack on Ukraine. It carried ammonia, a key ingredient of fertiliser.

“Opening that pipeline and delivering ammonia across the Black Sea to the global south is a priority for all of us,” Griffiths said.

“Ammonia is an essential ingredient for global food security.”

Negotiations have been taking place in recent weeks, including at a meeting yesterday in Geneva between Grynspan and Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergey Vershinin.

“We’re not there yet,” Griffiths said. “I hope that we’ll make it.”

Nuclear reactors

Ukraine’s nuclear energy agency has put the last operating reactor at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant into “cold shutdown”.

The move is a safety precaution amid the catastrophic flooding from the collapse of the nearby dam.

Russian forces have continued pummelling the country with missiles and drones overnight, with Ukrainian officials reporting at least four deaths and damage to a military airfield.

Five out of six reactors at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is occupied by Russian forces, are already in a state of cold shutdown, in which all control rods are inserted into the reactor core to stop the nuclear fission reaction and generation of heat and pressure.

Energoatom, the Ukrainian nuclear agency, said there was “no direct threat” to the Zaporizhzhia plant due to the breach of the Kakhovka dam further down the Dnieper River, which has forced thousands of people to flee flooding and also sharply reduced water levels in a reservoir used to help cool the facility.

The last reactor was put into cold shutdown on Thursday, Energoatom said, adding that other factors in the decision included shelling near the site which has damaged overhead lines connecting the plant to Ukraine’s energy system.

With all nuclear reactions stopped, temperatures and pressure inside reactors gradually decline, reducing the required intensity of water cooling of the radioactive fuel.

This is a nuclear power plant’s safest operating mode. Energoatom employees are still working at the power plant, although it remains controlled by the Russians.