Volunteers persecuted and deaths concealed – investigation of blowing up of Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant

The Kyiv Independent's war crimes investigations team in its new investigation "When Water Screams" reveals how in June 2023, the occupation authorities on the left bank of Kherson Oblast failed to evacuate civilians after the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant was blown up.

Source: Kyiv Independent’s (Ukrainian media outlet) investigative documentary When the Water Screams

Details: The journalists collected about fifty testimonies from eyewitnesses, relatives of those killed and volunteers who were in the occupied territories or took part in the rescue of people on the left bank of Kherson Oblast.

Witnesses explained that on the first day after the dam was blown up, there were no evacuation notices from the occupation authorities. Rescue workers from Russian-controlled services appeared in the flooded areas only a few days later. 

The evacuation was carried out by local residents who coordinated rescue efforts via Telegram messenger chats. However, the Russian military restricted their access to the flooded areas, took away boats and threatened and harassed volunteers.

Journalists registered one case where a man who helped with the evacuation of civilians went missing.

On the orders of Volodymyr Saldo, the Russia-appointed puppet governor of the occupied part of Kherson Oblast, the disaster response was overseen by Andrei Alekseyenko, a former mayor of the Russian city of Krasnodar who headed the occupation administration in Kharkiv Oblast in 2022. After Kharkiv Oblast was liberated by Ukraine’s Armed Forces, he was reassigned to Kherson Oblast and personally escorted Russian officials to the flooded areas.

At the time of the disaster, the local emergency service was led by Ivan Pavlenko, a major general in Russia’s internal service with experience in handling emergencies within Russia.

He was also in charge of the regional emergency response system, which is intended to manage crises like the flooding caused by the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant.

Journalists analysed documents on how these emergency systems operated in 2023 in Russia and its occupied territories, including the resources allocated for disaster response.

Their findings show that in the occupied part of Kherson Oblast, there were eight times fewer rescue workers and 18 times less specialised equipment than in Russia’s Ivanovo Oblast, which is similar in terms of land area.

Investigators report that the occupation authorities systematically downplayed the number of casualties. A year after the dam was blown up, Volodymyr Saldo officially reported only 60 deaths. However, eyewitnesses and volunteers estimate the actual number of victims could be in the hundreds.

Journalists have gathered evidence showing that occupation officials attempted to conceal the true scale of civilian losses. Medical staff at the health centre in Oleshky, after issuing just six death certificates, were forbidden from preparing any more such documents. The bodies of the dead were then removed from hospital premises.

The families of those killed were often not informed of burial locations. Eyewitnesses claim that drowned individuals were buried or transported to at least five temporarily occupied settlements of Kherson Oblast: Oleshky, Hola Prystan, Skadovsk, Henichesk and Kalanchak.

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