August 1941. World War II was raging and Hitler’s troops were advancing through the Kherson region of Ukraine, near the city of Zaporizhia. Stalin had a plan to stop them: blow up the city’s hydraulic dam.

The plan worked, they stopped the Nazi outpost, but the consequences for the population were dramatic: an estimated 20,000 to 100,000 people died as a result of the floods.

Floods, those of then, similar to those of now. Those that have caused the explosion of the Nova Kakhovka dam, also in the Kherson region. The streets have turned into rivers, there are 10,000 agricultural hectares flooded, 3,000 homes destroyed and up to 2,000 people evacuated. In addition, the water has washed away mines that have ended up exploding and surprising the rescue teams.

No one understands such a cruel attack. One of them, Ludmilla, a Kherson resident, comments: “How can they do this? Okay, it’s war, soldiers are fighting each other, but blow up the hydroelectric dam? I’m speechless. it’s barbaric“.

Water as a weapon of war

As barbaric as the fact that the authorities designated by Russia in the area have had to declare the state of emergency. The water used as a weapon of war but, as yago rodriguezdirector of ‘The Political Room’ told ‘Al Rojo Vivo’, it is not the first time that Russia has done so in this war: “It is a relatively common method in any war. In fact, it has already been practiced in this one. The Russians, for example, attacked and destroyed several dams this winter.”

The President of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelensky, says that right now there are some 20,000 people without drinking water that is why he does not hesitate to describe the Russian attack as “a crime, an ecocide”, adding that Blowing up the dam is like dropping an environmental bomb of mass destruction.