‘They hate us so much’: villagers flee flooding after dam attack

It took 24 hours for the flood waters to come to Bilozerka, a frontline village 8 miles west of Kherson. When they did, in a 90-minute rush early on Wednesday, they flooded out about 24 cottages in two streets by the waterline – the fast rising levels forcing Oleksandr to flee his home of 22 years.

“I was hiding in the attic, it was probably 4am, and I realised I had to swim back,” said Oleksandr, looking out to his house from the new waterline. His dog, Zhanka, followed him into the water, only to drown from the effort of trying to reach safety.

Oleksandr was waiting for an inflatable boat, paddled by aid workers, to take him back to the house where he hoped to see what he could rescue, or find his goat and other animals. A few minutes later, he returned empty handed, and cuddled another dog amid a bout of tears, forced to wait for the flood waters to recede.

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In a normal summer, Bilozerka, would be an attractive country location by a lake that links up to the Dnipro River, 45 miles downstream from the now ruined Kakhovka dam. But the flood water, bringing with it garbage and driftwood, has brought dirty ruin to parts of a village already at the centre of the 15-month war.

An artillery duel goes on in the distance as aid workers from a US charity, Global Empowerment Mission, hand out food parcels and try to work out, with local officials, what help the village will need in the coming weeks. It is hard for visitors not to be distracted by the explosions, though in this case, they are perhaps 10 miles off.

A nervousness hangs over the operation, which lasts a couple of hours. Two artillery rounds land just as the aid convoy arrives, white smoke rising up from nearby fields, prompting a security pause. It is decided it is safe to continue, but at another point, when too large a crowd has gathered to talk to aid workers and journalists, we are hurried on in case a missile were to strike.

Russian artillery strikes, a regular occurrence in and around Kherson, had dropped off for a couple of days after the dam burst, giving Ukrainians hope the enemy’s gun line had been forced further away because of greater flooding on the far southern bank. But the bombing returned on Thursday, killing one and wounding two more, a few hours after Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited, when evacuations were being carried out in Kherson itself.

Back in the village, Yulia Pavchuk, a teacher, and Natalia Dashkovska, her friend, have little good to say about Russians, believing them to have caused the dam burst earlier this week. “It was definitely not an accident, it was mined for a very long time,” Dashkovska begins. “With Russians there are definitely not any accidents. They hate us so much, they don’t perceive us as a country, a nation,” Pavchuk continues, describing the war and the flooding as a genocide.

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Electricity to the flooded part of the village has been cut off. Water supply to the taps has been cut off too, preventing washing and cleaning. Drinking water already had to be delivered by trucks, but now the demand will only increase, say the two women, and they expect a protracted clean-up and gradual reconstruction when Ukraine can ill afford it.

“I discussed this with my husband – if the dam burst, all the houses in the low-lying part of the village would be fucked,” Dashkovska adds, emphatically.

Yet, if this sounds serious, the women still believe the situation on the Russian-occupied side of the Dnipro is far worse. Dashkovska says she has heard that in Oleshky, across from Kherson, Russian soldiers have been preventing evacuations, and have “seized the top floor of an apartment block” for themselves.

Nobody is dead or missing or needs rescuing from a roof top or elsewhere in Bilozerka, and the urgent phase of the crisis is over, while the residents say the waters have peaked. A local official, who declines to be interviewed, can be overheard on the phone suggesting other areas might need immediate help more.

But Michael Capponi, the chief executive of Global Empowerment Mission, said the real problem for Bilozerka and the dozens of riverside villages like it, was the long process of recovery. “As soon as the water seeps, there is going to be so much interior damage,” he said. “Every single home is going to need bedding, mattresses. Some of the furniture will be saved, but appliances will be ruined. It looks like there could be no running water for a long time.”