![]() Most are posted by relatives in safer areas. Messages about stranded people, often trapped on the roofs of their houses, appear in these groups every few minutes. Much of the help is being organized by volunteers communicating on the encrypted app Telegram. Ukrainian soldiers later evacuated the family and their pets to the city of Kherson, National Police reported. Ukrainian military footage, for instance, showed their forces dropping a bottle of water from a drone to a boy trapped with his mother and sister in the attic of their home near Oleshky. The help that made it through has been scattered. “People who suffered from the flooding have been killed by the shelling, including a pregnant woman,” Peskov said. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov praised the “selfless work” of Russian emergency teams helping victims of the flooding, noting that they have been working under constant Ukrainian shelling. Russia claims that the Ukrainians also have been shelling flood-hit areas that Moscow controls. Some evacuation points in the city were hit, wounding nine people, according to Ukrainian officials. ![]() On Thursday, Russian shelling echoed not far from a square in Kherson where emergency crews and volunteers were dispensing aid. It had been under Russian control since the invasion in February 2022.Ĭompounding the tragedy, Russia has been shelling areas hit by the flooding, including the front-line city of Kherson. The dam also had been weakened by Russian neglect and water had been washing over it for weeks. The bulk of the dam itself is now submerged, and The AP images offered a limited snapshot, making it difficult to rule out any scenario. But the true scale of the disaster remains unclear for a region that was once home to tens of thousands of people.Ī drone flown Wednesday by an AP team over the dam’s wreckage revealed none of the scorch marks or shrapnel scars typical of a bombardment. Officials say that more than 6,000 people have been evacuated from dozens of inundated cities, towns and villages on both sides of the river. The Russian-occupied town across the river from the city of Kherson had a prewar population of 24,000. The latest disaster in the region began Tuesday, when the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, roughly 80 kilometers (50 miles) upstream from the town of Oleshky, collapsed, sending torrents of water down the Dnieper and across the war’s front lines. Russian President Vladimir Putin “has no plans at the current moment” to visit affected Moscow-occupied areas, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists. On Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to the area to assess the damage. Authorities there have aggressively evacuated civilians and brought in emergency supplies. It’s a sharp contrast to Ukrainian-controlled territory flooded by the dam collapse. The AP could not independently verify reports of boat seizures or that only Russians were being evacuated, but the account is in line with reporting by independent Russian media. Some say the soldiers will only help people with Russian passports.ĭetails of life in Russian-occupied Ukraine are often unclear. Lucky for her and her family, they were Ukrainian.Īccording to those stranded and their desperate Ukrainian rescuers, Russian forces are taking rescuers’ boats. “We were scared, we were trying to understand, ‘Who’s approaching us? Are they Russian or not?’ We raised a flag,” Shkrygalova said. That way, they survived in the war zone until Shkrygalova, 60, spotted a group of people in a boat and raised yellow, white and pink fabrics to get their attention. Her family began using their boat to scavenge for food, and find houses on higher ground with dry places to sleep. ![]() Water climbed waist-high on the second floor of Shkrygalova’s two-storey house. The boat was nothing special until Tuesday, when the Kakhovka dam ruptured and sent a flood from Ukraine’s largest reservoir into cities, towns and countryside downstream in a region that has suffered terribly since Russia invaded the country last year. KYIV, Ukraine (AP) - Alyona Shkrygalova’s family kept a rubber boat for their daily needs along the broad Dnieper River.
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