Ukrainian investigative officials on Friday claimed they intercepted a phone call between Russian agents who were discussing plans for a sabotage group to blow up the Nova Kakhovka dam, which collapsed this week and caused a major environmental and humanitarian disaster.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said in a Telegram post that Russia sought to blackmail Ukraine by blowing up the dam and creating a human-made disaster in the country’s southern region along the Dnieper River.
According to the intercepted phone call shared by the SBU, a Russian military officer says in the phone call that a “sabotage group is there,” allegedly referring to the dam.
“They wanted to scare people with this dam,” said the officer, who also discussed with another official how the dam breach did not go “according to plan” and impacted thousands of people.
The Hill could not immediately verify the recording.
The Kakhovka dam collapse unleashed mass flooding after its breach on Tuesday, leading to the evacuation of thousands of residents in dozens of settlements in Ukraine’s south.
At least 14 people have died, and tens of thousands of citizens remain without potable water in Russian-occupied and Ukrainian-held regions.
Vasyl Malyuk, the head of Ukraine’s SBU, said Moscow has “finally proved that it is a threat to the entire civilized world” by allegedly blowing up the dam.
“After all, only a real terrorist state can arrange a man-made and ecological catastrophe of this level,” Malyuk said in a statement. “And she will definitely answer for it — both on the battlefield and in international courts. Our task is to bring to justice not only the leaders of Putin’s regime, but also the ordinary perpetrators of crimes.”
Ukraine has accused Russia of planting explosives to breach the dam, arguing Moscow wanted to impede the Ukrainian counteroffensive that just launched.
Russia has claimed Kyiv bombarded the hydroelectric plant to stop future attacks in the Kherson region.
The U.S. is still investigating the incident and has yet to formally conclude who may have been behind the breach.
Russian forces have occupied the southern Ukrainian region around the dam for more than a year, but there is no compelling evidence as to whether Moscow blew it up and why it would do so.
The dam, which boasts a reservoir as large as the Great Salt Lake in Utah, supplies water to both Ukrainian and Russian-occupied regions, including the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014. Crimea is highly valued by Russian President Vladimir Putin.