Nine people were injured Thursday in Russian shelling in the Kherson region as it deals with massive flooding from the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, according to Ukrainian officials.
The attacks came shortly after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Kherson. Moscow meanwhile accused Ukraine of killing two people at an evacuation point on the Russian-controlled side of the Dnipro River.
The reservoir which had been created by the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine can no longer supply water to cool reactors at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the dam’s operator said Thursday.
Ukrhydroenergo’s chief executive Igor Syrota said the water level at the reservoir had gone “below the critical point of 12.7 metres (42 feet)”.
This means it could no longer supply “the ponds at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station to cool the plant”, he said on Ukrainian television.
The dam sits on the Dnipro River, forming a reservoir that provides the cooling water for the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, Europe’s largest, some 150 kilometres (90 miles) upstream.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi, who is due to visit the plant next week, said this week that the water could no longer be pumped if the level went below 12.7 metres.
