Collapse of major dam in Ukraine sparks emergency as Moscow and Kyiv trade blame

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it 'the largest man-made environmental disaster in Europe in decades'

Water runs through a breakthrough in the Kakhovka dam in Kakhovka, Ukraine (Ukrainian Presidential Office via AP)

A major dam in southern Ukraine has collapsed, flooding villages, endangering crops in the country’s breadbasket and threatening drinking water supplies as both sides in the war scrambled to evacuate residents and blamed each other for the destruction.

Ukraine accused Russian forces of blowing up the Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric power station, built in the 1950s on the Dnieper River in an area that Moscow has controlled for more than a year, while Russian officials blamed Ukrainian bombardment in the contested area.