Russia is blaming the West for the destruction of the Kakhovka dam. Moscow continues to say Ukraine sabotaged the bridge as “revenge” with the help of its Western allies saying that there were attacks on the Kakhovka dam in December 2022, using United States-supplied HIMARS rockets

Ukraine destroyed the Kakhovka dam in an “unthinkable crime” intended to harm Crimea for choosing Russia in 2014, Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, told the Security Council on Tuesday. according to a report by RT. 

“Feeling its total impunity and being encouraged by Western sponsors, the Kyiv regime decided to carry out this terrorist plot this time,” Nebenzia claimed. He noted that the Ukrainians had significantly increased the discharge of water from the Dnepropetrovsk hydroelectric power station, leading to even greater flooding downstream, “which indicates that this sabotage was planned in advance.”

Not only did the flood render a dozen towns along the Dnieper River uninhabitable, but it also reduced water levels in the North Crimea canal, which supplies water to the Russian peninsula. Ukraine had shut off the canal after Crimea voted to rejoin Russia in a 2014 referendum. It was only reopened last year when Russian troops took control of the area.

Nebenzia called the claims by Ukrainian, US, and EU officials that Russia was responsible for the dam’s destruction a “well-coordinated disinformation campaign,” in the same vein as previous allegations that Moscow was behind the shelling of its own people at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, or the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea. -RT

“The Kyiv regime has good teachers, responsible for destroying the Nord Stream [pipeline] and the deliberate targeting of the Tabqa dam in Syria. The West is used to doing the dirty work with other people’s hands,” Nebenzia told the Security Council.